


Enslaved

by nofaves



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Bondage, Complete, Consent Issues, M/M, Pittsburgh Penguins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:42:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nofaves/pseuds/nofaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU -- That lockout never happened.  Instead, both sides agreed a couple years ago to a radical new CBA, where the owners gave up a salary cap and the players surrendered themselves.  There would be no limits on either contract length or size, but if a player had to be cut from the roster before fulfilling its term, he would owe the team the balance of his contract.  If he couldn't buy himself out, the team was legally permitted to auction him off to the highest bidder.</p><p>Our story begins on a fateful Saturday morning in St. Louis, where Blues goaltender Ty Conklin is just waking up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not for everyone. It's long, it's rambling, it goes into detail in places that might make the average reader's eyes glaze over in boredom. But I hope that those hungering for slavefic approve of it.
> 
> There are many original characters sprinkled throughout the story, including some substituting for real people.
> 
> I dedicate this to my good friend and beta, eggybread. A single comment of hers inspired the premise, and she both kept me focused and encouraged me throughout its creation. Merci mille fois, ma belle copine!

I padded blearily to my front door on that Saturday morning, roundly cursing the bastards who’d awoken me from a sound sleep. “If this isn’t important,” I muttered to myself, “whoever this is had better have good health insurance.”  
  
When I opened the door I found two uniformed officers. One was tall and dark, the other, shorter, stockier and with mousy brown hair. Both carried grim, unsmiling expressions on their faces. Certainly not there to alert me that some kids had TP’d the tree out front, or that they were collecting for the local policeman’s charity. In fact, as I glanced over their spotless uniforms, I could find no patch or name tag that would ID them as police, but I saw no harm in at least being polite. “Something I can help you with, officers?”  
  
Both men ignored my question. “Ty Curtis Conklin?” the taller man asked.  
  
All three names? Sounded way too legal and official, and the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand at attention. “Yes…”  
  
“Come with us.”  
  
“What? I’m not going anywhere until you tell me—” Before I knew what was happening, the second officer pulled his sidearm and aimed it squarely between my eyes.  
  
“Step back into the house. Keep your hands where we can see them,” the first officer barked at me. What could I do? Sure, I wanted to fight back, to resist, to argue that they had no right – but I was hardly going to do any of that with the barrel of a gun staring me in the face. So I did as I was told, hoping to hell that one of my asshole friends had set up this prank.  
  
I watched the officers follow me in and close the door behind them. The shorter guy with the gun kept it trained on me as the other one pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “Now put your hands behind your head and interlace your fingers.”  
  
My breath caught in my throat; I shivered as an icy feeling of dread shot through my body. I can say truthfully that I have never been as afraid as I was that day. Numbly, I grabbed the back of my head and tried to keep the quiver from my voice. “May I speak?”  
  
I felt cold steel ratchet around my right wrist as my captor responded, “We are not authorized to answer any questions.”  
  
Both arms were drawn behind my back and cuffed together, and only then did the armed officer lower his weapon. I was helpless, but at least I no longer had a gun in my face. As he holstered the gun, he told the taller man, “We’ll collar him before we leave. I’m not taking any chances on him being recognized and liberated.”  
  
Damn it to fucking Hell. The Blues had cut me and no one had notified me.  
  
This can’t be happening, I thought. “Please, just let me make a phone call,” I begged the officers, but they were once more treating me as if I were a piece of furniture. “You don’t even have to un-cuff me… I’ll give you the number, you can use my phone.”  
  
The one who’d cuffed me reached behind his back and retrieved a shiny steel quarter-inch ring collar, opened it wide. “Don’t move,” he said matter-of-factly as he snapped it around my neck and screwed it shut. The other man pulled a bar code gun from his belt, stepped up to me and aimed it at the front of the collar. I saw the red laser blink, heard a beep.  
  
“He’s in the system. Let’s roll.”  
  
  
  
  
It was an overcast, cold Saturday morning when my phone woke me from a pleasant doze. I don’t usually sleep in on days off, but the temptation of a rainy-day break in the routine was too much to resist. I checked the caller ID. It was Greg Penrose, my agent and good friend.  
  
I barely got a hello out before I heard, “I thought I’d give you the heads-up, Marc. Just hope it’s not too late…”  
  
“Too late for what?”  
  
The moment of silence that hung in the air clenched my gut. No good news is preceded by that awful pause. Greg cleared his throat and said, “They’re selling Ty. Today.”  
  
“What?!” That made no sense to me. He wasn’t injured, hadn’t been involved in anything unsportsmanlike on or off the ice. He hadn’t had the greatest season so far, and there was talk of bringing up the kid from the AHL – but that hardly warranted a roster-cut and an auction.  
  
Something else was odd about it, though: usually when a player was auctioned off, word ran through the media like wildfire. The auctions themselves were high-profile events, with the richest people in North America bidding millions to own a former NHL player. To get top dollar, they were heavily promoted. But a quick sale? With no promotion? It just didn’t add up – there wouldn’t be more than one or two bidders.  
  
No. No way. Sounded almost like a private sale. But that was illegal…  
  
I’d almost forgotten Greg was still on the phone. “Sorry – couldn’t think straight for a minute.”  
  
“Understandable. He’s your friend.”  
  
A strange thought echoed through my head. _Friends don’t let friends get sold into slavery._  
  
I told Greg my suspicions and he agreed with me. I wondered if I had the resources to do something about it. “I’ve got some numbers for you, if you’re considering getting in,” he said, seemingly reading my mind. “But I gotta warn you, with the speed this is happening, someone must want him pretty bad  and on the cheap. Even so, you’ll need a loan and you’ll be upside down for a couple years until your own No-Sell clause kicks in…”  
  
He kept talking to me – money, specifics, dates, times – and like a cold wave, his words washed over me. When he stopped speaking, I asked, “Can you email all this to me? I gotta make a few calls…  
  
“I’ll handle what I can on my end,” he said. “Oh, before I forget…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Keep it quiet. If you're right, and the other buyer doesn't want a bidding war? You don’t want one either.”  
  
  
  
  
I sat in what can only be described as a large closet. Brightly lit, its walls were white and slightly padded, there were no windows and I saw no apparent door. High up in the corner was a tiny camera, no bigger than a webcam. _Must be how they’re keeping an eye on me…_  
  
The small padded shelf I sat on jutted out from the wall, just over knee-high and long enough to stretch out on, if I were so inclined.  
  
I wasn’t.  
  
I wasn’t at all inclined to struggle my way down with my hands still cuffed behind me, nor to have to keep rolling over in order to keep my shoulders from cramping. So I sat. And waited.  
  
It would do no good to yell, so I stayed quiet. My requests for a phone had been denied, both by the officers who’d taken me and by the detention center staff who’d processed me. And at this point, no phone call was going to save me anyway, so why bother. While I sat, wallowing in a mixture of fear and self-pity, my father’s words just kept buzzing through my head…  
  
 _“The union agreed to WHAT?”  
  
“Pop, the salary cap is gone. There’s money to be made on all sides now.”  
  
“At the risk of losing your freedom!”  
  
“C’mon. That part’ll get thrown out in court…”_  
  
But it didn’t. Seems no nation’s constitution covered  voluntary bondage. Not only did the union as a whole agree to the terms, but each individual player had to sign their own waiver – on camera, before witnesses. Veteran players of ten or more seasons were grandfathered out, as long as they didn’t sign a new deal. All new draftees had to sign their waivers before they were even eligible to draft – which kept some from pursuing a career in pro hockey.  
  
The rest of us? All we saw were the big dollar signs. None of us could see the five-by-seven padded cell I currently occupied.  
  
The wall in front of me shifted and swung open. Two armed officers, dressed identically as my captors, escorted a white-coated young woman wheeling a cart.  
  
“Ty Curtis Conklin?” she asked formally.  
  
I saw no need to politely rise to meet her. “Yes.”  
  
“I’m here to attach your permanent collar.”  
  
I had only heard rumors about this part, as there had been less than a dozen auctions in the NHL. I was pretty sure that the story about exploding collars was a myth, as who would pay all that money for a slave and then blow his head off?  
  
She held up the steel collar, which was much wider than the ring around my neck. This new one was flat, shiny, heavy, oppressive. It had a definite front and back to it, widening and following the curve of the neck in front. There must have been a hinge there as well, since the opening was in back.  
  
My mind saw that thing as a mouth, imagined it to have almost vampire-like teeth. Once it got hold of me, there was no turning back. I’d be forever changed. For the second time that day, I felt as if I were being strangled. I could barely breathe and the people in the room seemed to shrink away.  
  
“Do you have any questions…?” The woman’s voice echoed from miles away. Questions, yeah. Had a ton of them. I tried to speak, but my mouth refused to obey me.  
  
Oh, God. _Obey me._ How many times in the future would I have to hear those words, would I have to submit to someone else’s authority? I jerked instinctively at the cuffs, hoping that just this once, the chain would snap, or I’d be granted Samson’s strength for that one moment…  
  
 _“He’s freaking, Doc…”_  
  
A hand touched my shoulder.  
  
 _“He’ll be fine…”_  
  
The door. I fixated on it. It was open now, if I could just take them by surprise... Duck under the woman’s outstretched arm, past the unsuspecting guards – I’d throw myself through the first door I found, or even a window, if I had to.  
  
 _“I don’t know. Doesn’t look like he’s coming out of it…”  
  
“Give it time…”_  
  
I had no time. Time was my enemy. I was moments away from being forever enslaved, so each minute I could hold off those clamping jaws was one more minute I was free. Fight-or-flight took hold, I jumped to my feet, shrugged off the woman’s hand. But before I could take a step, the officers each grabbed one of my arms.  
  
They weren’t unsuspecting after all.  
  
 _“…got thorazine on that cart?”_  
  
I struggled, lunging wildly toward the door.  
  
 _“…don’t want to use it if I don’t have to…”_  
  
After a few minutes of struggling, my feet felt encased in ice, heavy, sliding on the tile floor. My heart pounded as if I were sprinting, but it was wasted effort. Eventually, exhaustion crept in and my movements slowed.  
  
 _“He’s wearing himself out…”  
  
“Best sedative in the world…”_  
  
Why had I bothered, I wondered as my legs refused to carry me. I was surprised at the gentleness of the officers as they calmly led me back to the ledge and helped me to sit.  
  
 _“Why do they always think they can escape?”_  
  
  
  
  
I think I must have burned out most of the cell towers in the Pittsburgh area that morning. Sure, I had to be careful who I called and what I told them, but I had to do everything I could to raise that money – both quickly and quietly.  
  
I started with the bank, took out a loan. With my accounts, they didn’t ask questions.  
  
 _“Hey, Tanger – gotta talk to you…”_  
  
Called my financial advisor and sold off a few investments. No red flags raised there, either.  
  
 _“Max, ça va?”_  
  
My agent called back and had arranged another loan.  
  
 _“Hey, buddy, I need a little favor…”_  
  
I left a few messages here and there, mainly to friends who wouldn’t spread it around that I sounded a little stressed.  
  
 _“…nah, it’s nothing…”_  
  
I kept careful notes. Whom I’d called, what I’d borrowed, how I’d repay.  
  
 _“…an unexpected expense…”_  
  
Finally, when I’d played every card I had, business and personal, I called the last name on the list. He had to be last, for Sid would have given me every penny I needed, and I wouldn’t put him in that position. It was enough that he was my safety net. The one who would guarantee that I wouldn’t be sitting and watching this auction – I’d be winning it.  
  
I told him everything, kept nothing back. At first, his reaction was predictable and nearly identical to mine, but he recovered quickly and began asking questions. “We really can’t do anything to stop this? Get a lawyer, call a judge?”  
  
We both knew the answer to that one. The first few auctions weren’t contested at all. When that New York fashion designer bought Avery, he reveled in it -- he was actually proud to be the first. Showed off his slave collar to the paparazzi, showed up at parties bound and gagged. The next two or three players may not have made the same media splash, but they seemed to enjoy the added attention they received.  
  
No way Ty was going to do the same.  
  
  
  
  
I glanced up at the woman, still holding the collar. Why had I bothered to fight? What was the point? Those few minutes that I’d considered precious were just minutes. Just time. And all I had to show for my fight were bruises on my wrists, an overall soreness, and the knowledge that it had all been for nothing.  
  
She spoke to me then, in measured tones that allowed me to follow. “Ty, the sooner we get this on, the sooner we can get you more comfortable.”  
  
Yeah, sure, I thought, and said as much. They probably have a suite somewhere reserved for me that would put Vegas casinos to shame. All-you-can-eat buffet on top of that. A totally free open bar, so I can drink all this away.  
  
“I’m sure you’d like those cuffs off,” she continued. “Once this is on and activated, we won’t need to keep you locked up.”  
  
 _Activated._ That was one of those questions I’d wanted to ask. I took a deep breath and tried to speak, but could only form a single word. “Explode…?”  
  
The officers smothered their amusement – rather badly, I might add – but the woman glared at them, shushed them. “That’s the first question everyone asks. I’m considering having a sign made for the cart: ‘Collars do not explode.’”  
  
She began to explain what it was and what it did. I let the details wash over me. Didn’t much feel the need to understand the thing, since understanding wouldn’t change my circumstances. But somewhere in my subconscious, something she said grabbed my attention.  
  
“…we zap it, the bolt fuses and both chips are triggered…”  
  
“Zap it?” I asked. “With what? Electric current? Like shock treatment?” I could feel my anxiety returning, fighting off that despair that I’d settled into. And I didn’t know which was worse.  
  
“We make you as comfortable as possible—”  
  
“NO!” I stood up again, fear taking root once more. I watched the officers step toward me, arms outstretched, ready for Round Two. I was trapped again.  
  
Trapped, restrained, terrified, and all with the awareness that I had zero control over anything that happened to me. Tears pricked my eyes, threatened to spill. I let them.  
  
“Just… just do it,” I murmured, my mind numb. “Whatever it is you’re gonna do to me…” I sat down. “Don’t care… you’re gonna do it anyway…”  
  
She pulled up a low stool and sat down. “Lie down on your side, Ty, and face the wall,” she said, guiding my head down onto a firm cushion that hadn’t been there earlier. It cradled the side of my head in such a way that it kept my neck completely straight. Like the hollow on a chopping-block…  
  
I felt her remove the ring from my neck, replace it with the new one. Felt her fiddle around with the back, heard the bolt slide into place.  
  
She placed her hand on my shoulder before speaking. “The current will last ten seconds, but you won’t feel all of it. Once the bolt and clasp are fused, the machine shuts off.”  
  
“I won’t feel all of it?”  
  
“The current triggers the chip that acts as your… leash.” She paused a moment, seemed to search her brain for a better word, abandoned the effort. “It sends a tiny electromagnetic pulse directly into your spinal cord – kind of like the reset button on a computer. You temporarily lose feeling and movement control from the neck down.”  
  
She said those awful words as if she were describing the weather that day or reading an instruction manual, completely without emotion.  
  
Without feeling. And soon I would be too.  
  
“Before we do this, I need to put these on,” she said. “I just need to lift your shirt.”  
  
She did and then attached two EKG sensors to my chest. A few seconds later, I heard the steady beeping of the monitor behind me. “Why…?” Again, I couldn’t finish my sentence. I felt like an idiot.  
  
“I’ll tell you when I’ve finished. We’ll need something to talk about for a bit.”  
  
Her answer did nothing to set my mind at rest. And I definitely wasn’t reassured when the wires she was attaching to the back of the collar started brushing my back. That beep began to accelerate. I took a deep breath. “Please… promise that…”  
  
“Calm down, Ty. This isn’t going to hurt.”  
  
“Tell me…” I managed to stammer. “Before you start… Just tell me.”  
  
A few more buttons clicked, some beeps and tones from the cart behind me, and then a feminine sigh. “You ready?”  
  
I couldn’t nod. “Y—yeah,” I choked out.  
  
“OK, here it goes.”  
  
I heard nothing. I felt nothing – no jolt, no buzz. I thought that the machine must have malfunctioned, until I felt some heat on the back of my neck. “Hot,” I whispered. “On my neck.”  
  
“Give it a minute…”  
  
It didn’t take nearly that long. Within seconds, I was a head, and nothing else. The heat was gone, but then, so was half of my neck and everything below it. I lost it then, if the EKG’s rapid-fire beeping was any indication. My whole world was nothing but a white wall and utter helplessness. I felt a hand on my head, a soft voice behind me.  
  
“This won’t last long. And I’ll be here until you can move on your own.” She addressed the two men in the room. “Go ahead and un-cuff him, turn him over onto his back.”  
  
I felt nothing as they brought my arms forward and crossed them over my abdomen. No pins-and-needles. No feeling like I was wrapped in quilts, as I had after previous surgeries. My world was now a white room. And a nameless woman who sat next to me.  
  
“How do you feel?” she asked, waving the officers out of the room.  
  
What a question to ask! _Oh, fine and dandy!_ I felt like yelling. _Feeling no pain, thanks for asking!_  
  
“Your respiration and heart rate are strong.”  
  
Well, that much I could tell from the EKG’s beep, now that it had slowed from speed metal to mere ‘70s disco. But if I was paralyzed, how was I breathing? I opened my mouth to ask but could only form the words with my lips.  
  
Seemed that was what she was waiting for. “How are you breathing?” I mouthed a yes and she explained. “The pulse beam is very narrow. As long as it avoids the brain stem, it doesn’t affect the body’s involuntary responses. You keep breathing, your food keeps digesting, and most importantly, you don’t lose control of… certain embarrassing bodily functions.” She flashed an encouraging smile.  
  
She was right – I couldn’t take a deep breath, since that required muscle control. And if I couldn’t control breath, I couldn’t talk. Unless… I listened for the rhythm, timed my whispered words to the exhale. “How… long…?”  
  
Her smile widened. “Very good! Most of the—” She bit back the word she seemed to be about to say, and her cheeks reddened. “Most don’t figure that out. To answer your question, though: about ten minutes or so. I could tell you tons of stuff about how it works, but it would probably put you to sleep.”  
  
And when I woke, would I find that all this was only a nightmare?  
  
A question hit me. I searched for the clearest phrasing using the fewest words. “Why… leash… collar…?”  
  
“One word: money,” she grumbled. “It’s not enough to attach something permanent and distinctive, no. Let’s make it impossible to remove without general anesthesia.”  
  
“You… d’sagree…?”  
  
Her face hardened then, went almost clinical. “It doesn’t matter what I think. The law is the law. My job is to carry out that law.” She checked her watch. “We can get rid of these now,” she said before lifting my shirt, removing the EKG sensors, and switching off the machine. “If the beam had been slightly too high, or a bit too strong, it could have resulted in respiratory distress.”  
  
I felt my eyebrows raise. “Stop… breathe…?”  
  
She sat back down. “That’s why I don’t explain much of the process beforehand. Tends to cause panic. I just wait the few minutes it takes to make sure it’s done right.” She sighed. “As long as you follow the rules, this should be the only time you ever have to experience this.”  
  
“Rules?”  
  
“Yes. If you attempt to escape this facility, the wired perimeter sets off the leash.” She pointed at me. “Fall down, go boom, can’t move.”  
  
“Don’want.”  
  
“Your… your owner will also have a remote control that can set it off as well. Just thought I’d warn you.” She frowned and sighed, tried to sound hopeful. “The authorities screen prospective owners, you know. No felons. No one with any history of violence. No…”  
  
No guarantees, I thought. They could make all the assurances they wanted, but if my owner wanted to, he or she could keep me like this forever. I closed my eyes to shut her out. When she stopped talking, I said, “No g’r’ntees.”  
  
She nodded. At least she was honest.  
  
I had one more question for her. “Name?”  
  
“I’m not supposed to,” she said, biting her lip. “See, we aren’t even allowed a name tag or an embroidered lab coat.”  
  
“Just… firs’name…” I didn’t even care if she made it up.  
  
“Alice,” she whispered.  
  
  
  
  
I looked out of the Gulfstream’s window, watched the clouds float by below. I had this childlike wish to go up to the cockpit and tell the pilot to ‘step on it,’ but I behaved myself and sat still. I glanced at my watch.  
  
“It’s two minutes later than when you last checked,” muttered Sid from the seat across the cabin. His arms were folded across his chest, head drooped, eyes still closed.  
  
He was right, of course. But his calmness bugged me, so I opened my mouth to give some sarcastic reply. I didn’t get the chance.  
  
“The jet can’t go any faster, either. Before you say that for the tenth time.”  
  
“Well, excuse me for caring,” I shot back angrily.  
  
He picked his head up. _“Hé, calme-toi, là,”_ he said. _“On y arrivera à temps.”_  
  
We’ll get there in time. I wished I could believe it. I wished I could just lean back and sleep the miles away, and for a moment, I hated that Sid could.  
  
My phone rang and I answered it.  
  
“Everything all set? Got the account numbers…?” Greg asked. I filled him in, answered all of his questions, listened while he repeated numbers back to me. Then he said, “The auction’s in twenty minutes, that’ll give me the chance to fax—”  
  
“What?” No way could we be there in time! The trip itself had another half-hour, and then the ride from the airport. I was going to miss it. Ty was going to be sold off who knows where and I had done all that work for nothing. I almost threw the phone across the cabin when I heard yelling on the other end.  
  
“Marc! Listen to me!”  
  
I put it back up to my ear. I couldn’t say a word.  
  
“Are you listening?”  
  
Still couldn’t speak. I tossed my phone to Sid and looked out the window in disgust. From a few feet away, I could hear Sid’s repeated ‘yeah’s and ‘uh-huh’s. What could they be talking about now?  
  
Once he’d ended the call, he threw the phone back. “Greg’s meeting us at the airport and driving us in.”  
  
Huh? What was the point, if we were too late? “Why bother? Might as well just fly home, we’re gonna miss it.”  
  
Sid shook his head. “He’s hired a buyer. A good one. Wins about 95% of the auctions he enters.” He gave an ironic chuckle. “Your agent hired you an agent.”  
  
I wasn’t laughing; all I could think about was the 5%. I could still lose him, before I’d had the chance to say goodbye. “Can’t lose…” My throat closed, choked off my words. I felt Sid’s hand pat my knee.  
  
“We’re not gonna lose him, Flower. I promise.”  
  
  
  
  
I slept some. Can’t say I slept too deeply, as I couldn’t find a comfortable position with that damn piece of steel around my neck.  
  
I couldn’t complain about the bed, or the room they gave me. Well, I could complain about the lack of windows, but what good would that do? I had a door that I could open and close. I had a bed and a bathroom. They delivered me food on a tray.  
  
Not like I could eat anything. If it was the plan to use my food to drug me into submission, that plan failed miserably – I barely ate three bites and only had a sip of the juice.  
  
When the attendant returned for the tray, I asked him how long I’d be staying.  
  
“Till your auction’s over,” he replied curtly. “Won’t be much longer.”  
  
Over? ‘Over’ implied that it had already begun! I jumped up and stood toe-to-toe with the young worker. “I’m being sold now? Now as in Right Now?”  
  
He backed off, but shot me a glare that told me that I was too aggressive. “Listen, you try that again and—”  
  
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted quickly. “I just… No one’s told me anything since I got here.”  
  
“I’m not—”  
  
“Yeah, I know, you’re not allowed to talk to me. I’m a non-person now.” I sat on the edge of the bed, head in my hands.  
  
“You gonna let me finish?” the attendant asked.  
  
I looked up. The young man was in his early twenties, I guessed. He was still holding my lunch tray and looking at me as if I had offended him in some way.  
  
“I’m sorry. You’re right, that was rude,” I said, wondering why I cared about etiquette at a time like this.  
  
“As I was going to say: I’m not  supposed to talk to the prisoners.” A twinkle appeared in his eye, but without an accompanying smile. “But I do a lot of things I’m not supposed to do.” He signaled ‘wait’ with an upraised finger, took my uneaten lunch out to the cart in the hallway, and then returned and closed the door.  
  
“What do you want to know?”  
  
  
  
  
We were ten minutes away from landing when Sid pulled an apple out of his duffle bag. My stomach responded to the sight of food with a rumble.  
  
“I brought two, you want?”  
  
I shook my head. No way I could eat now. My movie-filled mind kept picturing Ty in all sorts of bad scenes: chained in a dungeon, held in stocks, locked in a cell. He was cold and alone and scared – and here I was, sitting in luxury aboard a Gulfstream worth millions.  
  
I managed to whisper, “You think they’ve hurt him?”  
  
Sid paused a moment, as always, considering his words carefully. “No. Unless he resisted when they took him into custody,” he said. “Even then, they wouldn’t just beat the shit out of him – just restrain him so he couldn’t fight back.”  
  
Oh, God, there went my brain again. I could see him facedown on the ground, breathing hard after being chased, hands cuffed behind him, cops standing over him like hunters over a trophy kill.  
  
“Marc. He’s OK.”  
  
One thing I can say for Sid: he doesn’t tell his friends what he thinks they want to hear. He’s honest. You can trust him.  
  
So why couldn’t I believe him?  
  
  
  
  
“I’m being sold now?” I asked in a much softer tone. “Not just today, but now?”  
  
“Yep,” he answered, keeping his voice quiet. “Usually they don’t let us know any of the specifics – us meaning the workers here. We only find out a prisoner is leaving when he doesn’t have a next meal on the chart.”  
  
“And I don’t have a next meal.”  
  
“But that’s not how I know about your auction. As I was driving to work, I had the radio on. Any other time a hockey player gets sold, it’s all over the news. When Marleau went? They must have talked about it for a week.”  
  
I remembered that. He’d gotten a huge long-term deal and then had his career ended in that first year. Everyone knew there was no way he could raise the amount he was worth. Some Canadian multi-billionaire bought him and put him to work in his corporation. I also remember thinking then that it wasn’t such a bad life, as post-hockey careers went.  
  
“So what was being said about me?” I asked.  
  
He shook his head. “Nothing. It wasn’t mentioned. I thought I was heading to an average work day here – till I walked in and heard your name.” He paused a moment. “So I listened. The two guys who brought you in said that you hadn’t resisted, but that you kept asking for a phone. My boss told them that it was a good thing that they hadn’t let you have it, because the sale was this afternoon and they wanted to keep it hush-hush.”  
  
“But why?” I wondered aloud, not really addressing the attendant.  
  
“That’s above my payscale, buddy. All I know for sure is that you won’t be here for supper.” He stepped to the door. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”  
  
I didn’t need to bother finding a phone. It would all be over soon.  
  
  
  
  
Once we landed, it was all a blur. Getting off the plane, into the limo, driving through town. I know we talked, but I felt like the words were disappearing as they came out of my mouth.  
  
Was it over? Had we won? When could I see him?  
  
“…pick him up where?” Sid’s voice broke through my thoughts.  
  
“Everything gets done at the detention center. Takes about an hour or so, from what Frank tells me,” said Greg as he tapped his touchphone.  
  
“Have… have we won?” I asked hesitantly. “It’s over?”  
  
“It must be getting close.” He slid his finger up the screen and then scrolled down again. “It’s been five minutes since his last text.”  
  
Sid smiled. “If we’d lost, he’d have just texted that.”  
  
“Yep. Silence means that either the bidding’s still going on, or that we’ve won and he’s providing the financials,” my agent replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. “By the way, Marc? There are only two bidders: Frank and someone from a rival firm. Something awfully hinky about that.”  
  
“Does Frank know who the other guy's client is?” asked Sid.  
  
Greg shook his head. “Not yet. And he’s not wasting his time trying to find out.”  
  
  
  
  
I was glad I hadn’t eaten. Made getting sick a little easier.  
  
My life felt like an unfinished landscape. Some bits on it clear as day, but the gray unpainted parts were a mystery. What would the artist put there? A tree with all its leaves, green and lush in the sunlight? Or one with empty branches, half-covered in snow?  
  
Someone was bidding on me, buying me, going to own me. Would that someone treat me as the person I was, or the prisoner I had become?  
  
My door opened. Two officers stood outside.  
  
“Let’s go.”  
  
  
  
  
I think we sat in that car silently, seconds ticking by like hours, waiting for the phone to beep. Every sound made us flinch, from glasses tinkling in the mini-bar to the crunch of the leather seats when one of us shifted positions.  
  
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like all the air had been sucked out of the car. And just when I thought I’d let loose and yell, Greg’s phone rang.  
  
Just as on the jet, there were more ‘yeah’s and ‘uh-huh’s, until he finally tapped the screen and slipped the phone into his jacket pocket.  
  
“It’s over, Marc. He’s yours.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The auction has ended and Ty's new life has begun.

The officers escorted me to a large, light-filled room, with the first windows I’d seen since that morning, back at my house. In the center of the room was a high receptionist’s desk and all around the perimeter were little glass rooms, some of them occupied, some empty. I was taken to an empty one.  
  
Once inside, one of the officers pushed a button on the wall and a small padded shelf slid out, knee-high. I sat down, not waiting to be told to do so.  
  
The other officer placed a box at my feet, opened it and pulled out a pair of shackles. I flinched.  
  
“It’s policy,” he said, grasping one of my ankles. “Like hospitals discharging you in a wheelchair.” He attached the cuffs over my sweat pants. The chain connecting them was about a foot and a half long, allowing me to walk, but not to run.  
  
The manacles they put on my wrists looked like standard handcuffs, but with a six-inch chain between them. As they were attaching them, I peered into the box.  
  
“That’s it. Like I said, it’s just security policy. Once your owner takes possession, he can take ‘em off.”  
  
And what if he didn’t want to? Would I be spending the rest of my life like this?  
  
The officers left and I watched the scene in front of me through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. People came and went; some passing through the room, others stopping briefly by the central half-moon shaped receptionist’s desk. Occasionally, someone would step through the front door and the metal detector, and most would set it off.  
  
For ten minutes, I sat and watched. I resisted moving my arms and legs, hating the sound the chains made when I did. I watched the silent show, the people who carried on their lives... while mine came to an end.  
  
Three men entered the front door together. The first one wore a thousand-dollar designer suit, followed by two younger men in sunglasses, jeans and hoodies. There was something so familiar about them… the way they walked? I couldn’t place it, but something was there that teased at my memory.  
  
They stepped through the detector and, as I’d expected, set it off. They each got small plastic bins to place their metallic possessions into. Keys, wallet, change, phones. Sunglasses.  
  
Oh, God. Sid.  
  
 _Marc._  
  
I wouldn’t let my heart hope. There had to be another reason for them to be here.  
  
I watched Marc’s dark eyes scan the room, slowly, methodically, left to right, as if searching. I stood up and moved as close to the glass wall as I dared, hoping no one on the outside would object and whisk me back behind windowless walls.  
  
He kept scanning. Kept searching. And then his eyes met mine, his eyebrows rose, his jaw dropped.  
  
And my heart stopped.  
  
  
  
  
 _Bon Dieu,_  there he was. Chained in a glass prison, like a dog in a pet store window.  
  
Up to now, the whole situation was unreal, like the words of a novel that you read and forget a few days later. Even though I had been able to imagine Ty as a slave, actually seeing him like that smacked me hard in the gut.  
  
Everyone else in the room faded away as I seemed frozen in place. And then his hands rose, as if he were reaching for me. I couldn’t just stand there, now, could I?  
  
“Ty…”  
  
I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back to the real world. I turned toward the owner of that hand.  
  
“Pull it together, Flower, last minute of play,” muttered Sid. “Take care of business and then we can get him out of here.”  
  
  
  
  
He’d stood staring, as if he’d never seen me before. No angry glare, no look of relief, no customary smile. It looked like someone had turned him into a statue. Only one reason I could think of for that reaction – he hadn’t known I was there. He wasn’t here to save me. He might actually be here for someone else…  
  
My arms rose toward him, seemingly on their own. My palms found the glass, fingers outstretched in a futile attempt to reach him. I heard the chain rattle against the pane, illogically calling him, beckoning him closer.  
  
Sid’s hand on his shoulder stopped him, though, breaking the eye contact between us.  _Look up. Flower, please, look at me…_  But when a uniformed officer approached the group and extended an arm to guide them away, I flipped.  
  
I didn’t know if the doorway was wired to activate the collar, and I didn’t care. I took the three measured paces to the door and shoved it open.  
  
 _“Marc!!”_  
  
  
  
  
That morning, I had awoken halfway across the country from Ty. Like always, I missed him most just then. It had been our favorite time of the day, that year we were together. He’d told me often, then, to ‘ignore the universe.’   
  
I never knew how right he was, until it was over and he’d moved on.  
  
Hours later today, I was cutting the distance between us, with each minute bringing me closer to him...  
  
I’d always held out a bit of hope that our careers would cross once more, but the reality of the salary numbers involved made that hope fade day by day. He’d become the Blues’ starter, with a generous salary comparable to my own. Everything seemed to be going his way; coming back to Pittsburgh would have been a step backward for him.   
  
So it was surreal that I was now sitting mere feet away from him in St. Louis, pen in hand, signing mounds of paperwork that would bring him back to me for good.  
  
After he’d shouted my name and started heading toward us, two security guards grabbed him and would have taken him away. Thankfully, Sid kept his head.  
  
“Please,” he softly asked the officer who was standing beside me. “Can’t he come with us? I’m sure he won’t be any trouble.”  
  
That officer whistled at the guards to get their attention, waving them over to us. “It’s not standard practice, but seeing as how you know him…” Ty stopped resisting immediately when he realized they weren’t going to take him away, but one look at his eyes told me that if he’d had the chance to bolt for the door, he’d have taken it.  
  
We were over an hour in the conference room, signing the contracts that bound Ty to me for life. It seemed like each paper I read and then signed was identical to the last. And all the while, he sat in the corner of the room, his chained hands balled into fists.  
  
Was it irrational of me to be grateful they’d restrained him? As much as I hated seeing him brought so low, I knew that he would never have sat calmly by as his freedom was forever taken away. He would have fought back, even if it meant hurting someone. Even if it meant hurting me.  
  
When the process was nearly over, a man entered the room and approached my agent. Their heads bent together as they whispered, and then the man stood up and shook Greg’s hand before leaving.  
  
The paper-pushing clerk continued his assault on my right hand as a now-frowning Greg leaned over to Sid, whispered to him, and left. That irritated me – this whole day had been a mess and now everyone else in the room knew something that I didn’t.  
  
The last half-dozen signatures were on documents that detailed legal restrictions on Ty. Shit, those were hard to sign.  
  
“He is forbidden to drive or operate any heavy machinery…”  
  
“What the hell?” I interrupted. “He can’t drive? Why not?”  
  
He explained that if Ty’s collar were to become accidentally triggered, and he were driving at that moment, he would have no control over the vehicle. Once the paralyzer chips were made part of the slave collars, laws were passed pretty quickly to keep slaves from getting behind the wheel.  
  
All of a sudden, a terrible thought struck me. “What about flying?”  
  
“He can fly as long as he’s a passenger. But not as a pilot.”  
  
Ty’s head rose and his eyes widened at that statement, as I knew they would. Losing his freedom, his driver’s license and his pilot’s license – that hit him hard. Bad as that was, though, the last thing the clerk asked me might have been worst of all.  
  
“How do you want him registered?” When I cocked my head in confusion, he rephrased the question. “What name do you want to give him?”  
  
“He… he’s already got a name,” I blurted.  
  
“So you’re opting to keep his birth name for now? That’s fine. If you decide to change it later, all it requires is an online form registered with Homeland Security. It’s really simple.”  
  
Ty sat, nearly catatonic at the callousness of the clerk’s words. I was speechless, wishing all this were over and we were back home.  
  
A few more signatures and instructions and it was finally done. An officer handed me a key ring which held two keys and what looked like a vehicle remote. He told me that if I flipped the switch on the side and held the button down for five seconds, Ty would be paralyzed from the collar down. I glanced over at Ty as the man spoke, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze.  
  
“Keeps a slave pretty docile, knowing that they could crack their skull open if that’s set off while they’re standing up,” the officer said before stepping over to Ty and hoisting him to his feet. “Of course, it also has much more practical uses…” He was snickering, as if sharing a private joke with me. “Keeps ‘em from strugglin’, if you know what I mean.”  
  
I thought I’d be sick right there. I simply couldn’t picture… what that  _espèce de merde_  was trying to get me to picture. The idea that I would rape Ty, just because I owned him? It pissed me off.  
  
I forced my thoughts away from that and turned to the bright side: at least Ty knows his new owner. That’s gotta count for something, I thought. Better than being sold to a stranger who might do who knows what… With me, things could go back to the way they were. He could be happy.   
  
No, he would be happy.   
  
No matter how far from it he looked at the moment.  
  
  
  
  
They took everything about me that was me. And Marc just sat and signed off on all of it.  
  
I suppose I should be thankful he left me my name. Perhaps he simply couldn’t think of one off the top of his head that he liked better.  
  
Part of me was happy to see Marc’s face when the guard who was holding me started talking about the collar’s ‘more practical uses.’ He turned a bit green, and I thought he might puke all over that asshole’s shoes.  
  
Before we left, Sid whispered something to Marc. I’d watched the game of Telephone the whole time we’d been sitting in the conference room. I wondered how long it would take for the message to run the circuit. I also wondered how long it would take for one of them to let me in on it.  
  
Once outside, both Sid and Marc nervously scanned the parking lot.  
  
“I thought he was gonna be just outside the door,” Marc said.  
  
They kept looking until Sid pointed to a black stretch limo on the far side of the lot. Marc’s agent was standing next to it, tapping his foot.  
  
They both broke into full stride toward it, but my shackled legs couldn’t keep up.  
  
“Fuck!” yelled Sid. “We gotta slow down.”  
  
Marc shook his head. “No, we don’t.” He stood right in front of me, knelt down and hoisted me over his shoulder in a perfect fireman’s carry. Within seconds, we were in the car and out of the lot – Marc and I on one seat, Greg and Sid on the other.  
  
As the driver sped through the city, I noticed the concern on all three faces, but still had no idea what was causing it. “Why the rush, guys? It’s all legal now – or at least, it better be after more than an hour of paperwork.”  
  
No one answered me. Glances shot from face to face between them, as if none of the three wanted to let me in on the secret. Oh, I got the picture, loud and clear. I was surprised no one leaned over and petted me, telling me Everything Would Be All Right. I was a possession, not an equal. “Not you, too,” I muttered in frustration.  
  
Sid gasped. “No! Oh, Ty, no.” He reached out and took my hand. “I don’t care what the law calls you. I still call you my friend. Anyway, we had to get out fast because Greg got a tip from Frank, the buyer—” His concerned expression morphed into a sheepish frown. “Sorry, Ty. You might as well forgive me now for all the dumb things I’m gonna say to you on this trip.” His fingers slipped from my grasp to the chain between my wrists. “Flower, did they give you the key to this crap?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s on the remote thing.” He pulled it out of his hoodie pocket and stared at it before offering it to Sid.  
  
Sid shook his head. “Your privilege, not mine.”  
  
I held out my hands to Marc. Without a word he keyed open the cuffs and dropped them to the floor.  
  
“Did… did they hurt you?” he asked me, unshed tears glittering in his eyes.  
  
“Not physically, no,” I told him honestly. “They didn’t beat me, if that’s what you’re asking.”  
  
His hand shot out and caressed my cheek and a tear dropped down his. “I am so sorry this happened to you, Ty. So sorry…” He pulled me close then and the rest of the world fell away. His arms were the safe place I’d been longing for since this whole nightmare began, and I nestled inside. “You know, I wished every day that you would come back to me. That somehow it would all work out and we could be together.”  
  
“Guess you got your wish,” I said without thinking, regretting the words as soon as they passed my lips. How could I even think such a thing – that Marc would have wished this fate on me? I pulled back to explain, to apologize… But he seemed completely oblivious to the implication I’d just made.  
  
“I’m just glad we found out in time.” He bent to remove the shackles from my feet. “I can’t imagine what I… If I’d found out after…”  
  
His words aroused my curiosity. “How did you find out?”  
  
Marc pointed to his agent, who seemed to be deep in discussion with Sid and avoided glancing our way. “He called me this morning, said you were being sold today.”  
  
“Well, how did he find out?”  
  
Both Greg and Sid turned toward us then, as if suddenly noticing we were there. “I got a call from my wife’s sister,” said Greg. “Krista is Jim O’Hara’s secretary.”  
  
James O’Hara. Multi-billionaire owner of the St. Louis Blues. The man who had just sold me.  
  
He continued. “All she wanted to do was call to let someone know what was happening. She thought you were getting shafted.”  
  
“She wasn’t wrong,” I retorted.  
  
“Yeah, well, now he’s the one on the shafted end. He had, shall we say, other plans for you. And he’s none too happy that those plans have all been shot to hell.”  
  
Other plans? He’d sold me; what other plan could he have had? Clarity hit and all the facts fell into place: my ‘abduction’ that morning, not allowing me contact with anyone, selling me the same day… “He had a buyer hand-picked, didn’t he?” I asked Greg, who nodded in response.  
  
“And that buyer had a leg up on us. All his financing was in place,” Marc added. “We barely had time to get the money together and get on a plane.” He turned toward Greg. “What was the final bid? Did we need it all?”  
  
Greg pulled a document out of the messenger bag at his feet, glanced at it, handed it to Marc. “All of it, and a little of the spare.”  
  
Marc smiled at Sid. “You know I’m good for it.”  
  
“I know where you live,” joked Sid.  
  
I glanced from one face to another, realizing how grateful I was for those men in that car and the sacrifice that each had made for me. “Seriously, guys…” I said. “Saying thank you isn’t enough.” Marc must have been thinking the same thing, as his eyes welled up once more. He grabbed my hand and held tight, blinked the tears back.  
  
Greg’s face grew serious, though. “We aren’t out of the woods yet. I won’t feel good until we’re in the air.” He pulled out his phone to make another call.  
  
“You think something’s gonna happen.” I left it as a statement of fact, not a question.  
  
He answered me, covering the phone as he did so. “Remind me one day to tell you the whole story. Suffice to say that I got a tip that we might not want to stay long in the Gateway City.”  
  
  
  
  
I must admit, when we pulled up to the terminal, I was feeling pretty good. Everything had worked out, Ty was safe, and we were on our way back home. Greg had called ahead and the Gulfstream was idling on the tarmac. He led the way out to board the plane.  
  
“OK, guys, I texted the pilot to take off as soon as we’re in,” he said, waving his phone. “Sorry about the lack of female flight attendants, but those cost extra.”  
  
“Would’ve been worth the expense…” teased Sid with a smile.  
  
Ty looked up. “Looks all clear, not a cloud in the sky. Wonder if they’d let me sit up front.”  
  
I winked at him. “They might, but I won’t. You’re with me.”  
  
“I’m not wearing the stewardess costume, no matter how you ask.” He winked back.  
  
And that’s when all hell broke loose.  
  
We never heard a thing, but suddenly Greg collapsed to the ground like a marionette without strings. Sid got to him first. When he turned him over, a blood stain spread out across his shoulder.  
  
“He’s been shot!” Sid yelled as he turned to scan the skyline behind us. I thought I saw something twinkle in the setting sun before another bullet whizzed past us, embedding itself in the tarmac.  
  
“Let’s go!” shouted Ty, pushing me forward. “And spread out!” He scooped Greg up and ran, keeping his head down. We heard a few more whizzes before we were safe inside and the plane was moving down the runway. We were so stunned at what had happened that we forgot to strap in for takeoff.  
  
Ty realized the danger first. “Get in and buckle up!” Sid and I grabbed a seat, pulled our belts closed as fast as we could. Ty got Greg seated and buckled down, just in time for the jet’s nose to lift, sending him sailing to the back of the cabin. I heard a sickening thud.  
  
“Ty! Ty, answer me!”  
  
“He can’t, Marc,” Sid replied. “He’s down – hit his head on an armrest.”   
  
Before I could get up to check on him, Ty growled in frustration. “Stay in your seats, guys, I’m fine.” By the time we leveled out and it was safe to get up, I could hear Ty moaning softly.  
  
I knelt down beside him. “Don’t move.”  
  
“I’m OK. Just hit my head.” He smiled that lopsided smile I’d missed so much. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”  
  
My fingers searched the back of his head for the lump. His grimace and accompanying hiss let me know that I’d found it. “You’ll live, I guess.”  
  
“Wouldn’t want to deprive you of your investment,” he shot back. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. I decided to leave him no doubt.   
  
“I’m not going to apologize again. What’s done is done. You’re mine,  _mon ami._  We’re going back to Pittsburgh and we’ll be together, just like before…”  
  
“It’s not the same, Marc. I have no choice in the matter.” He sat up, rocked his neck. His eyes met mine. “But I can’t blame you for any of it. If anything, I should be grateful that it’s you…”  
  
Grateful? I didn’t want grateful. I wanted things back the way they were, and I told him so.  
  
“You don’t seem to get it,” he barked, eyes flashing anger. “I. Am. A. Slave. A non-person. This?” He pointed to his collar. “They told me that it can’t be removed without putting me under general anesthesia. It's permanent. On top of that, I can't drive, can't fly, can't have a credit card or a bank account. I can't sign any kind of contract. I can't call anything my own.”  
  
“None of that matters—”  
  
“None of that matters to you!”  
  
That pissed me off. “And what if it did matter, Ty? What difference would it make to you? Would it change anything about all that?”  
  
He opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted.  
  
“Uh, guys,” said Sid. “Hate to break up the fight, but I could use a hand.” We both made our way up to where Sid was bent over Greg, his hand still putting pressure on the wound. Greg’s lips were moving, but his eyes stayed closed. “He’s just about stopped bleeding, but I want a towel or something before I take the pressure off.”  
  
Ty stepped to the back of the jet and returned with a couple of bar towels. “How bad’s the wound?” he asked, handing Sid a towel.  
  
He gently pulled his blood-covered hand off Greg’s shoulder, unbuttoned his dress shirt and peered under it. “Better than I thought it would be. Exit in front is clean.”  
  
“A through-and-through?” Ty asked rhetorically. “Lucky for him.”  
  
I felt useless. My agent was seriously injured; my friends had things under control -- and all I could do was stand there. I yanked my hat off and ran my fingers through my hair in frustration.  
  
“Ow!”  
  
Two pairs of eyes turned toward me. “What’s wrong?” asked Sid.  
  
“I don’t know,” I said, slowly repeating the gesture. “Something stings here, right above my ear…”  
  
Ty peered at the spot my fingers had found. He lifted the hair away from the area and gasped.  
  
“You’ve been hit.”


	3. Chapter 3

A burn mark. About four inches long and maybe a quarter-inch wide. Looked like someone had taken a long skinny curling iron and touched it to the side of Marc’s head. As wounds go, this one could hardly have been less severe.  
  
As experiences go, this one could hardly have been more terrifying. Had he looked the wrong direction on our sprint to the jet, had he zigged instead of zagged… I might have been carrying his body on board instead of rescuing his agent.  
  
He turned his hat over and over in trembling hands, searching for a hole he truly didn’t want to find. Finally, though, there it was, looking less like a bullet hole and more like a run in a nylon dress sock.  
  
The blood drained from his face and he teetered on his feet. I guided him to the seat across the cabin, knelt down beside him, watched as he buckled himself back in. I knew that any words I might say would be little more than noise to him at that moment, but I couldn’t just keep silent.  
  
“You’re alive.”  
  
His expression never changed; his stare didn’t waver. “I know.”  
  
“We’re on our way home.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” he whispered without nodding.  
  
Sid tapped me on the shoulder. “Could really use your help,” he said. “You think there’s a blanket back there?”  
  
“Probably,” I responded. My mind warred with my heart – I knew that I could talk Marc out of his terror, but Greg’s need was greater. I rose and patted Marc’s shoulder on my way back.  
  
When I returned, blanket in hand, I was glad to see Greg conscious and alert. “Dude, you gave us a scare.”  
  
“Yeah, remind me not to… go on any more rescue missions…” He swallowed and gritted his teeth against the pain. “Got a whole new respect for cops.”  
  
What could I say? Had I really been worth the risk of three men’s lives? Finally I asked Sid, “You planning on getting him to an ER? That’s not just a flesh wound.”  
  
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”  
  
Greg cleared his throat. “Can’t… too many questions… it’ll get reported…”  
  
To me, getting Greg the medical attention he needed outweighed the shielding of our privacy. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”  
  
“Image… Tell him, Sid.”  
  
Sid shushed him, turned to glance at me, turned back. “Don’t talk, just relax. Let me make a few phone calls.” He had it all under control, so I turned my attention back to Marc.  
  
He hadn’t moved since I left him, was still staring straight ahead. His hands were methodically folding and unfolding his hat. “That might be the longest I’ve seen you bareheaded – well, except for formal occasions,” I joked.  
  
He nodded. Same as before.  
  
“Marc?”  
  
“Yeah,” he droned half-heartedly.  
  
This was starting to irritate me. It wasn’t like him to wade in a shallow pool of self-pity. Something had to be done to snap him out of it. So like an idiot, I drew on my library of Hollywood film knowledge and smacked him. Right across the cheek.

Well, that did it. He was so pissed that he jumped to his feet, or more accurately, tried to jump to his feet. He’d forgotten that he was still buckled into his seat, so his attempt to stand was unsuccessful, not to mention downright funny. I backed up a bit and smothered my amusement.  
  
He popped the buckle, but this time when he stood up, it was slow, deliberate. “Nice to know you can laugh,” he said without smiling. “Wonder how much you’d be laughing if I put those chains back on you.”  
  
A chill washed over me, made me shiver. Then a horrible betraying thought… “You still have them?” I thought I’d puke right there. “You kept them?”  
  
Sid interrupted before he could respond to my question. “Flower, you don’t mean that. He was only—”  
  
“Don’t tell me what I don’t mean,” he spat at Sid, but then turned back to me. “I almost get killed coming to get you.”  
  
I’d seen Marc angry before, experienced it firsthand. He had to get it out, had to yell and swear occasionally, had to let the pressure off. I knew that pressure could be released quicker with me as the outlet, and since I'd been the one to piss him off, I decided to let him. “I know.”  
  
He closed his eyes tightly, shook his head and growled, “You don’t know! And you don’t know what else to do, so you hit me?”  
  
“Did it work?” I asked, rather foolishly.  
  
“If you mean ‘Did I get pissed off enough to threaten you?’ then yeah, it worked.” He took a deep breath, blew it out. “Sit down.” He pointed to the seat behind his.  
  
He was giving me orders and I didn’t like it. “Look, I was wrong. I’m sorry.” I wasn’t lying; I had been wrong to hit him. And in the past, that admission would have simmered him down, to where he could let go of his anger and forgive me.  
  
“Ty, sit down.” He stood ramrod-straight, still pointing.  
  
What had I done? If there was one thing I knew about Marc, I knew that he’d never make a threat he wasn’t prepared to carry out. So I sat down, precisely where he'd ordered me to sit, placed my hands in my lap and waited.  
  
Sid stood by, not knowing what to say. Finally he whispered, “You aren’t really gonna chain him up, are you?”  
  
Marc didn’t say a word, just turned his back on me and sat down in his seat.  
  
  
  
  
Had I made a colossal mistake?  
  
I really hadn’t rescued Ty. He was still a slave.  
  
I hadn’t chosen to change his name, yet it still had been legally changed. My last name now followed his birth name.  
  
And hidden deep in my hoodie pocket were the restraints he'd worn out the door of the detention center. I'd thought of leaving them in the limo, but some strange urge made me hang on to them.  
  
I guess I intended to seal the deal, bring him home, and have life just go on as before. But each moment that passed showed me that I had been naïve. I had the right to tell him what to do, and he had to obey. If I wanted to, I could put the shackles on his ankles, could lock the manacles around his wrists.   
  
I could tell him to get up out of that seat and kneel at my feet.  
  
Sad thing was, I did want to. Not the chaining, mind you. I wanted him kneeling, head bowed, right beside me. Down where I could reach out and touch his hair, where he could rest his head on my lap. Was there something wrong with me?  
  
I turned that thought over and over in my head through the rest of the flight and through the short ride home. Sid, ever a man of his word, had made a few phone calls and said that he’d be taking care of Greg. That was good enough for me.  
  
“Been a long day,” I sighed as we walked through my front door. “You hungry?”  
  
His eyes brightened a bit and I wondered when he’d last eaten. But then he shook his head.  
  
“I’m good.”  
  
“Not what I asked.”  
  
“What do you want me to say, Marc? That getting sold into slavery really builds the appetite?” He stood still, planting his hands on his hips. “Why don’t you just order me to eat if you think it’s what I need?”  
  
That hurt. And it must have shown on my face because Ty stepped closer to me and bowed his head. I lifted it and touched my forehead to his.  
  
I couldn’t speak, but now it wasn’t pain or fear that stopped my mouth. He was mine and he was here and warm and safe and _mine._ And I didn’t care what my friends would say about us, or how the media or the fans would react, or what my family—  
  
My dad. His voice echoed in my head from the not-so-distant past…  
  
 _“It’s wrong. Some things are right and some things are just wrong. Owning people is wrong.”  
  
“I agree with you, but—”  
  
“There is no ‘but.’ If you agree with me, you will not support this agreement. You won’t sign it.”  
  
“Papa, if I don’t sign, I don’t play…”_  
  
He’d turned his back on me then, stalked out of the room, slammed his bedroom door behind him. When I was about to leave that night, he came out to say goodbye. I hugged him and told him I loved him, asked him when he’d be in Pittsburgh next.  
  
 _“Never. As long as this awful thing is legal, as long as the U.S. government allows one man to own another, I will not set foot in that country.”_  
  
And now, here I was, my arms wrapped around a man I owned. To keep the love of one, I risked losing the love of another.  
  
“I didn’t mean it, what I said…” whispered Ty, his words nudging me back to the present. “I’m sorry.”  
  
I cradled his face in my hands. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said and kissed him, deeply, slowly, pouring my heart into it.  
  
This wasn’t a mistake. It may not have been the way I wanted him, but it was what we had. And but for my actions that day, we would have had nothing.  
  
“Ty…”  
  
His mouth closed over mine, swallowing any further communication. When he finally let me up for air, I tried to speak. His finger across my lips made me pause.  
  
“Marc, I don’t want to talk about… anything. Not what happened, not the future, not my condition, not your worries.” He kissed me once more, hard and insistent. “I don’t want to talk. I want you. Let’s save it for tomorrow, OK?”  
  
I nodded. Talking could wait.  
  
  
  
  
We fit together as if we hadn’t spent more than three years apart. He still remembered all those little touches that drove me mad and I still remembered that he hated being called his most common nickname in bed.  
  
I remembered it. Didn’t stop me from messing with his head the next morning. “Nothing like making a flower bloom,” I murmured, trying hard to keep the grin under control.  
  
“Just like you,” he responded drowsily, “making it happen out of shit.”  
  
“Hey, I do what I can.” I kissed him then, enjoying the slow pace, the not-needing-to-be-anywhere time of day. He responded, scooting over in bed and pasting himself to me. I ground my hips against his and noticed that more of him had awakened. “Hmmm… Looks like my ‘fertilizer’ is just what’s needed to make… a flower… grow…”  
  
He muttered something then about needing a sock to make me shut up. At least I think that was the word he used. Funny, though, all it took to do the job right were his lips, bearing down from above me and eliminating not only my ability, but my desire to speak as well.  
  
“So much better, Ty,” he whispered into my ear. He remembered that, too – that his soft whispered voice goes right through me. Makes my hair stand on end, my breath catch, my cock twitch. One breathy phrase from him and I was putty in his hands. I felt myself tremble as he took it one step further: he began to speak whispered French. He could have been reciting laws of physics and it wouldn’t have mattered to me.  
  
“Marc, please…” was all I was able to get out before he moved his mouth from my ear to my lips, shutting up me once again. I began to get his unspoken message. He wanted my silence, and he’d picked a damn good way to get it. I smiled to show him I understood.  
  
He grinned, too, and inched his body higher up until he was kneeling over my chest, his rigid cock poised over my face. I got that message as well, and proceeded to make him tremble. As I took him in my mouth, I recalled something else from our past…  
  
I began a low moan, punctuated by the occasional muffled ‘protest,’ which vibrated the length of his shaft. He shivered and his thrusts got a little harder, more insistent. I played along, closing my eyes and shaking my head in mock dissent, until I realized he was on the edge, barely holding on to his control.  
  
There was a choice to be made, and I made it. I clutched his hips, imprisoned him in my arms, didn’t allow him to pull back. My voice, tongue and lips brought him closer, closer to his eventual release.  
  
“Coming… no, Ty, not in your…”  
  
My choice. Not his. I held on tight, took him as deep as I could, and although I knew he’d never decipher my words, I urged him over the brink. “Come on, baby, give it to me…”  
  
A few minutes later, as sunlight bathed the room, I glanced over at him – drenched in sweat, still panting in sated exhaustion, smiling wide enough to rival the morning’s light.  
  
That smile was all mine.  
  
  
  
  
I’d always believed in a few unchanging facts. The world is round. The sky is blue. No matter how good your team is, sooner or later, you’ll lose. And the phone always rings when you least expect it, when you least want it, and the news is what you least want to hear.  
  
Of course, my phone didn’t so much ring as it vibrated, almost jumping off my bedside table. Since Ty was sleeping, I picked it up, slid out of bed and into the hallway before answering it.  
  
“So… everything OK over there?” Sid asked.  
  
Assuming he wasn’t wondering how Ty and I had spent the night and early morning, I responded, “We’re good. How’s Greg?”  
  
“In the hospital, resting semi-comfortably. At least as comfortably as he can be with a bullet hole in his pec.”  
  
That was good to know. I wondered how they'd managed to get my stubborn agent to agree to go to the ER, but I didn't wonder long.  
  
“Mario has a golf buddy, a doctor over at Presby. He called in a favor.”  
  
I smiled. Mario seemed to be holding favors from half the county. I imagined a little square of paper with “I.O.U. One hospital stay, no questions asked” scrawled on it.  
  
“Anyway...” drawled Sid, as if he really didn't want to be having this conversation. “Did you read all that crap they had you sign yesterday?”  
  
“Not every single word, if that's what you're asking. This is gonna sound dumb, but it was too much English.” As fluent as I was in my second language, my brain had a habit of shutting down when faced with as much of it as I saw the day before.  
  
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He sighed. “Greg asked me to dig through his bag for a few things last night, and I found…”  
  
His silence made me nervous. “Sid, what are you trying to say?”  
  
“There’s a lot of stuff they didn’t tell you.”  
  
I stepped back to the doorway, peered in at Ty. It didn’t surprise me that the pencil-pusher hadn’t covered every detail. _I_ couldn’t imagine what life would be like now, so how could people who didn’t even know us be able to tell us what we’d be facing? “Like what?”  
  
“Did you know that an agent from Homeland Security will be showing up at your house? Says here within a week to ten days.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“An inspection.”  
  
Ty rolled over in his sleep, almost as if he were dreaming the conversation Sid and I were having. As the blanket slipped down, his collar reflected the morning sun, shooting it dart-like into my eyes.  
  
“What kind of inspection? And why is that such a problem? My place is perfectly fine.”  
  
“It isn’t your house they inspect. It’s Ty.” He paused a moment. “Listen, Marc, I’m on my way out and you’re not far out of my way. I’m gonna drop this paperwork off with you so that you’re… you can get prepared.”  
  
That sounded ominous. “Sid, what aren’t you telling me?”  
  
“Were you planning to go out today?” he asked unexpectedly.  
  
“No, I’m off till tomorrow— Sid! Tell me!”  
  
My raised voice woke Ty. He wiped his eyes blearily as he sat up.  
  
“You can’t take Ty out. Not unless you… Unless he’s…”  
  
 _“Tabernac! Dis-moi!”_  
  
After a moment of silence, he murmured, “Until the inspection, you can’t take him off your property unless he’s restrained.”  
  
As Sid spoke those awful words, Ty’s eyes met mine and he smiled. It felt like someone had barreled into me on a full-speed breakaway. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. Sid mumbled a goodbye, then disconnected.  
  
What could I tell him? How could I keep this from him? He pushed the blanket aside, swung his legs out, got to his feet. He stretched naked, tall and proud and golden in the sun, his muscles rippling with power. He grinned as he stepped closer to me, slipping my phone from my unresisting fingers.  
  
“We won’t need this, now will we?”  
  
“Ty, there’s something I… something I didn’t know about—”  
  
He took a page from my book, covering my mouth with his to ensure my silence. Oh, how easy it would be to just follow where he was leading, to forget reality. To ignore the damn universe and just focus on here, now. And as his arms stole about me and pulled me close, as the warmth of his body radiated on mine… oh, yes, it was easy. I returned his kiss eagerly, hungrily.  
  
Ironically, another kind of hunger reared its head as Ty’s stomach let out a loud gurgle. Our lips parted, our eyes met and Ty snickered sheepishly.  
  
“I… guess we should take care of that first,” I said.  
  
  
  
  
We got up that morning, we ate, we talked – but something was weighing on Marc. Something he was trying to hide from me. And every time I brought up the subject, he’d smile and act like nothing was wrong.  
  
Sid came by, dropped off a fat manila folder and rushed out, explaining that he still had to be at practice.  
  
“You aren’t practicing today?” I asked him after Sid had gone.  
  
“No. Coach gave me the weekend off to…” He considered his words carefully. “He knew how important this was to me.”  
  
A troubling thought occurred to me. “Does everyone in the dressing room know? About me, I mean?”  
  
“You know how fast news travels.”  
  
I wondered how fast it had traveled in the Blues’ dressing room. Wondered if anyone there missed me. Wondered if it had traveled all the way to Alaska… I dreaded the calls I had to make that day.  
  
“Ty, you O.K.? Something wrong?”  
  
I wanted to say “Everything’s wrong,” but that would have been oversimplifying the circumstances. So I turned Marc’s question back on him. “I might ask you the same thing.” He didn’t respond, but his eyes flicked to the dining room table, where the folder Sid had brought lay.  
  
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked him, stepping into the dining room. “There’s something there that’s bugging you.”  
  
He sprang to his feet and headed me off before I could reach the folder. “Ty, don’t. I haven’t read it all yet…”  
  
I reached out and took him by the shoulder, spun him around to face me. “You’re hiding something. Something important.” He wouldn’t look at me, didn’t try to joke it away. I lifted his face, forced his eyes to meet mine. “You’re scaring me.”  
  
He must have seen that I wasn’t lying – I was scared. He’d never kept a secret from me, not ever.  
  
“I… I can’t tell you,” he finally stammered. “Not that I want to keep something from you – I just don’t know all the facts. I haven’t read all that.” He pointed to the inch-thick pile of paperwork in the folder.  
  
“All of that? Marc, I know you. It’ll take you a week!” He smiled at my exaggeration. “Let me help. Please.”  
  
His smile vanished. I knew precisely what that lack of expression meant – that he wouldn’t open up, not without serious motivation to do so. I decided to give him some.  
  
“Tell me!” I shouted at him. “Don’t treat me like a damned idiot! Give me some credit – I’m not gonna just fall over and die when faced with something frightening!”  
  
“It’s not frightening! It’s fucking humiliating!”  
  
“Just how bad could it be?” I asked naively.  
  
Marc let out a frustrated yell and paced a small circle, much like he does on the ice when he lets a goal by. Then he stood directly in front of me. “I can’t take you out of the house.”  
  
OK, that didn’t even make non-sense. According to the law, I was his property. He should have been able to do as he pleased with me. “Who says you can’t?”  
  
“The law.”  
  
“The law says you can’t take me out of the house? What aren’t you telling me?”  
  
He whirled away from me and took the stairs two at a time, muttering in French the whole way up. After a minute he returned carrying a small plastic bag, which he upended and dumped out with a clatter. On the floor at my feet were the restraints that the guards at the detention center had put on me.  
  
“I have to chain you up! Like a fucking dog! That’s the only way I can take you off my property!” he roared and began to pace once more. “My neighbors, they’ll be out walking their dogs and I’ll be out walking you!”  
  
“Maybe you read it wrong—”  
  
“I haven’t read it yet!” His voice began to climb into the next octave. “And I don’t care what it says, I’m not gonna do it! I’m not gonna put those back on you, watch you struggle just to walk – I can’t.”  
  
“Didn’t stop you from threatening to cuff me on board the jet.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Not that they weren’t true, though.  
  
His jaw dropped. “Ty, I’m sorry,” he said once he’d recovered. “I wouldn’t have. I was just so mad…”  
  
“Don’t lie to me. I know you better than that. You meant what you said.” I picked up the manacles. “You don’t want to see me in these?” He didn’t answer, just stood there. “There must have been a reason you kept them.”  
  
I placed the closed cuff next to my wrist, as if I were about to snap it on.  
  
Marc’s eyes widened and he gripped my wrist. “Ty, don’t!” He grabbed the chain and yanked the cuffs out of my hands.  
  
“Oh, but it’s OK when you get mad, huh?” I don’t know what possessed me to needle him; I guess I could blame it on my own frustration. “Is this gonna be the way things go between us? If I do or say something that irritates you, are you gonna solve it by punishing me?”  
  
For a moment, I regretted taking this conversational path. Marc looked like I had just kicked his dog. But the scared insecure part of me really wanted answers. If he got home from a bad game one night, and I pushed him for details, could I find myself chained to the bedpost and forced to sleep on the floor? When I had allowed myself to be his pressure relief valve yesterday on the jet, had I been setting a tone for our future?  
  
My wrist was still in his firm grasp. I had to know just where he stood.  
  
“Put them on me, Marc,” I said with as much calmness as I could muster. “You had the balls to bring those out here and dump them at my feet. You got the balls to use ‘em?” I brought my other hand up, placed my wrists parallel to each other.  
  
“Ty…”  
  
“Put them on.”  
  
I had to know if he would.  
  
I had to know if I could let him.  
  
He stared blankly at the manacles in his hands. For a moment, I thought he’d back down. But he took a deep breath and snapped the cuffs on me before he could change his mind.  
  
“You happy now?” he growled. “Feel more like a slave like that?”  
  
I walked off to the living room, stood in front of the large picture window, watched the people walk by outside. My questions were answered: he had done it and I’d let him. But the question he’d just asked me deserved an answer.  
  
I turned back toward him and lifted my imprisoned hands. “Marc, these don’t make me anything. I’m yours, whether I’m chained or free. These change nothing. This,” I said, pointing to the collar around my neck, “changes nothing. That stack of paperwork changes nothing. I am yours.”  
  
He stepped closer, allowing me to enclose his face with my fingers. “And what those people out there think?” he whispered, nodding at the window.  
  
I kissed him there in front of that window, wordlessly defying the universe beyond it. “Doesn’t matter.”  
  
“It does to me. I don’t want anyone else to see you this way. Weak, submissive. That isn’t you.”  
  
I thought about his words, but more importantly, I let him think about what he’d just said. After a moment, I quietly spoke. “You don’t have to. I’ll just stay inside.”  
  
“But that’s not fair to you.”  
  
“Yeah, Marc, like so much of my life now is fucking fair,” I muttered in disgust. “But if it hurts you to see me this way, then you don’t have to.”  
  
“What if it didn’t?”  
  
I was confused. “What if what didn’t what?” We both laughed at my attempt at a real English sentence, but then his face grew serious.  
  
“What if it didn’t bother me to see you in chains?”  
  
I knew that he was really asking if I would meekly follow any order. But I chose to answer a very different interpretation of his question. “I’d think a lot less of you, Flower.”  
  
  
  
  
I should have known I hadn’t needed to keep anything from Ty. He has a maddening way of digging up what I’d never imagine sharing with anyone. He drags whatever I’m hiding out into the light, we talk, and in the end, the problem is avoided.  
  
We sat down and leafed through the paperwork, found the piece that dealt with the inspection. We both read it, even though it was obviously tough on Ty.  
  
 _…a Homeland Security agent will inspect the slave within a week after the sale, no more than ten days after the auction date. The slave’s physical condition will be verified, any noticeable injuries or pre-existing medical conditions will be logged. Also, the frequencies for the collar chips will be verified and logged, ready for access by law enforcement in the event of a slave’s escape.  
  
For this reason, all un-inspected slaves will not leave their owner’s property without being securely restrained…_  
  
He got that far and shoved the paper at me, sighed and shrugged his shoulders.  
  
“It’s a week. I can stay inside and in the yard for a week,” he’d said in a flat monotone.  
  
So, problem solved. Or so I thought. I went back to work, carried on with my life as I always had. Only difference was that now, when I got home for the night, I had someone waiting for me.  
  
A couple of days became nearly a week, and still I was no closer to nailing down a date for Ty’s inspection. On Day Three, the agent assigned to our case had called me while I was at practice; I returned her call while she was at lunch. Day Four, same thing. Day Five, I tried to call her first thing in the morning, but she didn’t return the call until I was in my car, driving to the practice arena.  
  
Every day, another miss, another reasonable excuse, another day Ty was imprisoned in my home. And another day of trying to stay positive in front of both Ty and my teammates.  
  
It’s strange – I’d assumed I’d get questions from them. When no questions were asked, I’d assumed Sid had briefed them all on what had happened. But I’d been completely wrong. Almost to a man, they all pretended that it had never happened. That their goalie hadn’t bought his former backup.  
  
So the week passed, with no progress. A couple days into Week Two, I was peeling off my practice jersey when I felt a roll of tape hit me in the back. I turned around, expecting to see almost two dozen pairs of eyes deliberately trying to avoid contact with mine. Instead, I got Max’s bold stare.  
  
“Flower, when are you bringing Conks in?” he asked. “I haven’t talked to that guy in like, forever.”  
  
Brooks’s mouth thinned as he looked up from unlacing his skates. Slavery was a touchy subject for him; he disagreed with it one hundred percent, but he had a new family to care for and pro hockey paid very well. On top of that, he knew Ty and liked him.   
  
I doubted that he wanted to see him standing in the dressing room, his neck encircled by a steel collar. But he surprised me when he added his softly-voiced request to Max’s. “Yeah, can’t keep him locked up in your house, you know. Do him good to see some friends.”  
  
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t respond. How could I tell people who cared about Ty, who considered themselves his friends, that the only way I could bring him into the dressing room was to chain him hand and foot first?  
  
Sid rescued me, of course. He’d headed toward the players’ lounge when Max’s line of questioning began, and then called me on his cell from there. I made a show of glancing at my phone’s caller ID. “Sorry, guys, gotta take this.”  
  
“Thanks, Sid,” I’d told him once I’d joined him. Little did I know…  
  
“You really haven’t taken him out? Not once since we’ve been home?” he demanded from his seat on the sofa. “Even a dog gets treated better.”  
  
He knew all the facts! He’d read all that damn paperwork and knew the laws and still he was passing judgment on me? “Fine, Sid.” I sat down next to him. “You come over, put those cuffs on him, and parade him down my street like a fuckin’ criminal. I won’t do it.”  
  
Sid’s mouth dropped open. “What? That only had to be until the feds did their inspection and logged his chip frequencies—”  
  
“Which hasn’t happened yet!” I closed my eyes tightly, not wanting to lose control of my emotions here, with all the guys so close by.  
  
“Flower… oh fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” His hand patted my shoulder. “When is it scheduled?”  
  
“It’s not.” I got up and crossed the room, grabbed a bottled water out of the fridge. “We’re playing phone tag. When I’m free, she’s not. When she’s free, I’m at practice, or on my way to practice, or…”  
  
“Or on the road.”  
  
We had come off a one-game trip a few days before, but were scheduled to be gone for the next three days. Three more days that Ty would be forced to remain confined to my house and yard.  
  
“And the last thing you needed was Max and Brooksie asking a ton of questions.”  
  
I dropped back onto the sofa. “I’m not mad at them. Really. They care about Ty…” My voice broke and there was no way I could hold back the tears this time.  
  
Sid, seemingly not caring who saw what, pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me, holding me tightly as I sobbed all my frustration and fear into his shoulder. I had no idea who might have come in the room – the whole team could have been in there, for all I knew. And it felt like I spent about an hour that way, but when I looked over Sid’s shoulder at the clock on the wall, it had only been about five minutes.  
  
“Sorry, Sid. Got snot all over your shirt,” I said, trying to lighten the mood a little.  
  
But Sid didn’t care – about the mood or his own dampness. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You’re doing the best you can, in a role I know you never imagined playing.” He paused a moment as a thought struck him. “How’s your dad dealing with this?”  
  
“Whole other pot of fish, there.” I hadn’t called; I hadn’t told him; I guess I was kind of hoping he’d just one day find out on his own. When I let Sid know that, I was expecting his disappointment. I’d simply avoided every problem I’d had since the day I bought Ty.  
  
“Have you called your sister yet?” he asked as he got up and headed for the door. I shook my head. “Why not do that tonight, and try to explain what you can to her? It’s not like you've had a lot of choices. Step in the right direction.” We both knew how useful little sisters could be, in the best of ways. I thought about Marylene and smiled.  
  
“Thanks. For everything, Sid.”  
  
“Hey, that’s what friends are for.” His face grew serious. “You know, if I was ever in trouble as deep as Ty was? It’s good to know that I have a friend who would move mountains like you did for him.”


	4. Chapter 4

Another Saturday morning. Another early doorbell. And nearly the same outcome.  
  
I opened the door to see one rather petite young brunette in a tailored business suit, flanked by two muscle-bound behemoths. Both guys looked like they’d recently worked as fighters: the taller one was dark and attractive, sort of a WWE meets GQ. The shorter guy’s face had seen a few too many fists over the years.  
  
I’d barely opened my mouth to greet them when the woman barked, “Where’s your master?”  
  
“My what?” Blame the time of day, blame the relationship that Marc and I had, but I hadn’t wrapped my head around that particular phrasing. Before I could recover and give her an answer, both men barged into the doorway past me, roughly shoving me aside. The shorter blond guy carried in a duffel bag, dropped it in the middle of the room. “Hey!” I shouted, outraged at the invasion.  
  
The woman’s eyebrow arched as she scanned me from head to toe. When her brief inspection was finished, she told the men to search the place.  
  
“Waste of time,” I said, leaning against the wall and crossing my arms, pretending an ease I didn’t feel. “He’s not here.” He’d been due back the night before, but flights were delayed and the team had decided to get some rest and return home this morning. Perversely, I didn’t feel like sharing that information with the three rather rude people in Marc’s living room.  
  
Disregarding my words as if they hadn’t even been spoken, she gestured the men away and turned her attention back to me. “Let me guess. He trusts you here alone, right?”  
  
Her voice dripped sarcasm, but it was much too early in the day for me to respond in kind. “Why wouldn’t he trust me? I’m his friend.” Now that her hulking sidekicks weren’t around, I stepped closer to her, I guess in an attempt to use my size to intimidate her. After all, she was almost a foot shorter than me, possibly half my weight.  
  
She wasn’t fazed. Meeting my gaze, she corrected me. “You are his slave. His property. And as a federal agent assigned to his case, I have the right to act on his behalf, if I believe that you are a threat to his property rights.” As she spoke, the two men returned, confirming Marc’s absence. GQ Guy picked up the duffel bag and rummaged through it; the other one stepped behind me. I felt like the walls were closing in, the closer he got to me. My turn to be intimidated.  
  
Something didn’t seem right about the whole thing, though. “You’re a federal agent? I don’t think so,” I said. “You didn’t badge me, you didn’t ID yourself when you walked in. I don’t know who you are, but you best get your asses out of here now—” Before I could finish the sentence, she snapped her manicured fingers and the beast at my back nearly pulled my arms out of their sockets. He dragged me a few feet to the dining room, dropped me in a chair. His partner zip-tied my wrists to its arms.  
  
“What the fuck! Let me go, assholes, you have no right!” Like an idiot, I tugged fiercely on the plastic bands. They weren’t going to give, and yanking on them would only slice up my wrists. I began to pray that I’d hear the sound of Marc’s SUV pulling into the driveway.  
  
I watched in terror as the woman opened her handbag and took out a slim plastic silver box, one that looked almost like an antique cigarette case. From it she pulled a syringe. “Hold his arm steady.”  
  
“NO!” I kicked out, tried to stand, yelled at the top of my lungs. Once more, the woman snapped her fingers, and the tall one pulled something out of the black bag and tossed it to Boxer Guy. Oh, God, a roll of duct tape… He plastered the tape over my mouth and then wrapped it twice around my head, shutting off my protests. The other man grabbed two more zip-ties and made sure I wouldn’t be kicking anymore.  
  
Now that I had been completely restrained, the woman once more approached me. She leaned down close to meet me eye to eye. “Now then. Just what did all that fighting accomplish?”  
  
I knew she wouldn’t understand my muffled response, but I could no more have stayed quiet than I could have broken the bonds that held me. I felt her fingers brush my own, felt her knee nudge my inner thigh. I flinched and tried to shrink away from her touch, and she laughed in response.  
  
“Now this is the way a slave should be kept,” she whispered to me before straightening up and motioning to the two men. They held my arm perfectly still as she deftly inserted the needle. She waited a few seconds before waving them out of the room.  
  
I felt the fog begin to roll in, felt my muscles grow slack.  
  
“That’s better, isn’t it?” she crooned, almost as if she were talking to a child. She stepped behind me and draped her arms around my neck. The scent of her floral perfume perfectly suited her now ultra-feminine demeanor. “Oh, if you were mine… The things I could do with you…” When I shook my head and muttered a protest, she laughed huskily, shot her fingers into my hair, tugged my head back. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, slave?”  
  
Even my now drugged-up brain knew that these weren’t feds. Or anyone in authority. Were they here to rob the place? It didn’t appear so, as GQ Guy returned. He stood off to the side and kept his distance, watching intently but showing no emotion.  
  
“He can’t help you, slave. You and I are gonna have a little party…” She leaned down and nibbled on my earlobe.  
  
I couldn’t tell if she was trying to seduce me or put on a show for the guy in the corner of the room. But he didn’t even flinch as she stuck her tongue straight into my ear. The husky laugh returned as she pulled back ever so slightly and whispered, “What a waste. Sold to a man, when you could have been owned by a woman. Who might have even made it worth losing your freedom…”  
  
I was sickened by her, frightened by her actions. _Marc! Please! Come home!_ My mind screamed the words as my mouth threw a muzzled tirade. But my repeated weak tugs at my bonds, my protests from behind the gag, my head thrashing back and forth in an effort to stay away from her – all of those seemed to excite her more and more.  
  
“Mmmm, talk to me, slave,” she ordered, straddling my left leg and rhythmically thrusting her hips back and forth. And I don’t know why, but I did. I rambled and yelled and begged and pleaded, I poured out my soul to her. I gave her what she wanted, even if she couldn’t understand one syllable.  
  
She smiled then, an enigmatic smile. “Look at me, slave.” Again, I obeyed her order, staring deep into her eyes.  
  
“You are mine, do you hear me?”  
  
I nodded, unable to defy her.  
  
Those long slender fingers traveled up my thigh, higher and higher. They grazed my cock lightly through the fabric of my sweat pants, and I was horrified when I responded to her.  
  
 _No! Marc, help me!_  
  
Firmer pressure then, matching the sinuous rhythm of her hips. Her lips began to rain kisses on my forehead, my eyes, my cheekbones. I was powerless to resist.  
  
“You want this, my slave. You know you want me…”  
  
Once more, I nodded. Once more, my mind screamed for rescue. I felt a warm trickle on both my hands, and realized it was my blood.  
  
She unbuttoned her blazer, tossed it to the floor. Unbuttoned her peach-colored blouse, nearly the same shade as the flesh beneath it. As she opened it wider, she murmured, “See anything you like, slave?” Again the scent of flowers assaulted me, again I responded to her siren’s song. My fingers extended vainly toward her. “Oh, can’t reach, can you…?” She leaned closer to me, until the edge of her breast was just touching the tip of my finger.  
  
What the hell was I doing?! I didn’t want her!  
  
I turned my head, closed my eyes, screamed out Marc’s name into the gag. She must have understood me, as she let out a sultry snicker.  
  
“He can’t save you, either. My employer’s reach is a lot farther than your master bargained for when he interfered with her plans. But don’t worry your pretty head, slave. My job is to put everything right.”  
  
My dulled, drugged mind struggled to make sense of her words. A _woman_ had plans for me? And Marc had gotten in the way? If anyone had some hidden motive, it would have been Jim O’Hara, but last I knew, he wasn’t a woman. Some facts started streaming through my brain…  
  
 _I was sold the same day I was cut.  
  
O’Hara stood to lose millions by selling me off fast.  
  
He had a buyer picked out in advance._  
  
This hand-picked buyer must have been a woman. A woman with money and connections that would have allowed her to quickly hire snipers to take shots at us at the airport. A woman who wouldn’t flinch at hiring kidnappers to take me back. A woman who didn’t care that my life was destroyed by her actions.  
  
Once again my mouth ran away from me, asking questions and begging to be cut loose. But as woozy as I felt, I don’t think she would have understood my words even if I hadn’t been gagged. One thing for sure, she knew I was upset.  
  
“I don’t know why you’re fighting this... You were destined for a much better life than to be the property of a lowlife frog hockey player.”  
  
The front door opened suddenly and Boxer Guy strode through. “Sorry, Mel. Gotta go. His plane just landed.”  
  
 _Marc! Don’t let them take me…_  
  
The woman got off my lap and hurriedly re-dressed, as GQ Guy reached into the duffel and retrieved wire cutters. A naïve thought hit me – they were going to let me go!  
  
“No, don’t. Not yet,” Mel said as she reached for her purse and pulled out the syringe. “I’ll give him this first.” Without warning, she plunged the needle in and quickly shot the rest of the drug into my arm. In seconds, I was floating on a cloud and listening to her words drift along beside me.  
  
“This isn’t over, slave… you’re part of my pay… and I intend to collect in full…”  
  
  
  
  
“Ty!” I called as I walked through the front door, dropping my bags in the entryway. The door had been unlocked, so he had to be awake. The only time he ever locked the door when I wasn’t home was when he was sleeping. “Ty!”  
  
No answer.  
  
I went from room to room, calling his name, getting no response. _Oh, no…_  
  
He couldn’t have. He’d given me no indication he was going to run. But as I traveled through the house and peeked out the windows, I got an awful feeling in my gut.  
  
Suddenly I remembered the cell phone I’d given him the day I left for the roadtrip. He’d shaken his head and refused to take it from me at first.  
  
 _“What’s this for? I can’t leave the house, so it’s not like I can’t hear the landline.”  
  
“That’s temporary,” I said. “Once I get back and we get the inspection done, you’ll be allowed to go out, and you’ll need it.”_  
  
I pulled my own phone out and called him. And then heard his faint ringtone from the bedroom.  
  
 _“Working hard to get my fill  
Everybody wants a thrill  
Payin’ anything to roll the dice  
Just one more time...”_  
  
That settled it for me – I knew right then that he hadn’t run.  
  
The next person I called was Sid.  
  
“You gotta call the cops, Flower,” he’d said, once I told him the whole story.  
  
“No!” I protested. “He didn’t run, I know it. He left his phone behind—”  
  
“Because it could be used to track him down,” Sid explained. “That’s not proof he didn’t run. And if you don’t report him missing, you could be charged with aiding and abetting. You could be arrested.” He paused a moment and then spoke with a more gentle tone. “Hang up and call 911. I know you feel like it’s a betrayal, but it’s what has to be done.”  
  
I felt like I had been doing ‘what has to be done’ for weeks. This was just the final straw. “You’re right, Sid,” I admitted. “I don’t want to. But I will.”  
  
The next hour or so went by in a blur. The police officers who showed up looked almost irritated at being summoned, as if my call were a waste of their time. They seemed hell-bent on labeling Ty a runaway.  
  
“Seen it over and over since the new law,” the older one said. His brass name badge read ‘Connolly’ and I almost expected him to spit, like a character from an old western movie. “Some guys see the big bucks, sell themselves off, and then when they find out they can’t change their minds, they run.”  
  
“He didn’t run.”  
  
His younger partner, Officer Kowalski, asked me, “What makes you so sure?”  
  
“I know him. He would have told me—”  
  
“Oh, that’s funny!” interrupted Connolly. “Gotta remember that one, Teddy. ‘My slave would have told me if he had intended to run away...’”  
  
I felt completely frustrated. No one was listening to me, and I couldn’t make them understand. “Damn it! He did not fucking run!” Two pairs of eyes narrowed at my outburst. But neither officer argued with me. Now they were listening. “Someone had to take him, there’s no other explanation.”  
  
Well, they listened to me. And then Officer Connolly spent the next ten minutes telling me what an idiot I was for believing what I did. His partner wandered around my house, looking at the furniture, leafing through my mail…  
  
My mail!  
  
“Hey! What’s the date on that envelope?” I asked him.  
  
“Postmarked yesterday, why?”  
  
“My mail arrives in the morning every day. That’s today’s mail!”  
  
They both looked at me as if I had said all that in French. Finally Connolly asked, “Why does it matter if it’s today’s or yesterday’s?”  
  
“Because I didn’t get the mail. Ty must have. Which means he was here this morning.”  
  
He seemed about to say something in response, but Kowalski beat him to it. “You know, if I were gonna run, I wouldn’t have waited around until just before my master was due back.” He nodded at me and turned to the older man. “I’d have beat feet as soon as his car left the driveway.”  
  
“C’mon, Ted,” the senior partner said. “Slaves run. They aren’t kidnapped…” His voice tailed off as a thought hit him. He turned to me and asked, “Did your boy have any family around here? Someone who might have wanted to rescue him?”  
  
“No,” I answered without thinking. “Not that Ty doesn’t have family. But they’re not from here; they live in Alaska.” I realized that I didn’t know how much Ty’s family knew about all this.  
  
“Alaska, huh?” Connolly pulled out a memo pad and pen, and jotted a note. “We can check all flights out of there for relatives.”  
  
As he spoke, I wondered… “Why can’t you trace him through his collar? I thought that was the reason he has to wear it.”  
  
Kowalski shook his head. “We can’t. He’s not in our system; we checked that already. How long have you had him?”  
  
I told them the short version of the long story, from the very beginning. Ty’s quick sale, my scramble to win the auction, getting ambushed at the airport, the never-ending delays in getting the inspection set up. The whole time I talked, the older officer kept his pen and pad at hand for the occasional note. As I finished the tale, I noticed Connolly shaking his head.  
  
 _He doesn’t believe me… They think he’s run away… I’ll never see him again…_  
  
“What a walkin’ clusterfuck,” spouted the older officer. “If I had a suspicious mind, I’d think someone was pulling some strings.”  
  
Kowalski chuckled. “Partner, you’ve got one of the most suspicious minds I know. What’s your call?”  
  
“Just ‘cause he’s not in the official system, doesn’t mean we can’t track his GPS manually,” he said before turning to me. “Where are your owner’s papers?”  
  
  
  
  
 _“…you really think you’re gonna fuck him? As doped up as he is?”  
  
“You don’t know what I gave him, Eddie… wasn’t just a sedative…”_  
  
Words, all distorted and whiny, sometimes loud and pounding, sometimes like fast blowing wind.  
  
My mind struggled to hold on to some of those words, like lifelines in this storm.  
  
Mel. That word was hers, her name. Strange that a beautiful woman who smelled of lilacs and roses was named Mel. Could be Melissa, I guess…  
  
Ed. That was Boxer Guy. As mean as he looked, he didn’t try to hurt me. Didn’t yank the tape off my face like he could have before freeing me from the chair, didn’t tie my hands too tightly behind my back. Just enough to get the job done.  
  
Mario. Fitting word for GQ Guy. Only they pronounced it all Italian-like and drawn out, _Maaahhh-rrrio_ , trilling the r. He liked to watch Mel play with me. His expression didn’t show it, but his eyes never left her as she touched me.  
  
And she kept touching me, this tiny woman with lust in her hard dark eyes. Touched me so often that eventually I stopped flinching when she did.  
  
 _“You don’t think Miz O will get pissed off? He’s hers, you know.”  
  
“Oh, no. Not today, he isn’t. He’s mine.”_  
  
I was in and out the whole trip to wherever they took me -- could have been the other side of Pittsburgh or the other side of the world. You know the phrase, ‘blink and you miss it’? When I blinked, minutes or hours went by.  
  
At least they’d picked a comfortable way to travel. No being tossed hogtied into the back of a cargo van for me, thank you very much. They had a plush conversion van to toss me into, with carpets so thick and soft that I almost bounced when I fell.  
  
 _“Careful! You remember our orders?”  
  
“Yeah. ‘Any bruise you leave on him, I leave on you.’”_  
  
Mario had recited the words like a schoolboy learning a lesson. So that was why Ed had been so nice to me…  
  
And then Mel had been nice, as Ed and Mario disappeared behind the curtain separating the back from the cab and the van got moving. She cut the rope that held my wrists and ankles together, allowing me to stretch out.  
  
“Don’t try anything, slave…”  
  
Slave. That was my word. All she ever called me.  
  
“I… h’ve name…” My freed mouth didn’t seem to want to respond to my orders.  
  
“Not anymore, slave. Your new mistress will call you whatever she likes.”  
  
 _Marc…_  
  
She smirked. “Oh, I doubt she’ll call you that.”  
  
Had I called him out loud? I couldn’t tell anymore. This was all too unreal. I felt like I was flying, soaring through the air, but when I tried to move, something tugged at me. I couldn’t make my arms respond, couldn’t pull my hands forward. _Well, yeah_ , I thought in a rational moment, _Ed tied them behind your back._  
  
I looked up at the woman with the funny name. _Mel’s a guy’s name…_  
  
“No, it’s short for Melisande.”  
  
She was either reading my mind or I was speaking out loud. I guessed the second one. “Please… ‘ntie me… won’t run…”  
  
She smiled a smile so bright that I thought I’d seen an angel. An angel who would set me free and then I could really fly.  
  
“Not a chance, slave. I’m getting paid serious coin to return you to your rightful owner.” She smiled again, traced a line with her finger from the middle of my forehead to the tip of my nose. I wanted to bite it.  
  
“Marc’s… owner…”  
  
The smile disappeared. She clamped both hands on either side of my face, holding my head immobile. “Listen, slave, get this through your pretty head. There was a mistake made. The law might recognize Fleury as your owner, but that’s too damn bad. Your owner’s name is—” She stopped abruptly, exhaled, relaxed her shoulders. “I’m getting ahead of myself,” she purred.  
  
“At the moment, _I_ own you.”  
  
  
  
  
An hour and three phone calls to their superiors later, Kowalski’s laptop was finally connected to the mainframe at police headquarters. He typed in Ty’s GPS chip frequency and waited for the computer to work its magic.  
  
“How long…?” I whispered, not wanting to seem impatient. I was grateful they’d gone to bat for me with their bosses.  
  
“Oh, not long.”  
  
Every second felt like an hour as I imagined a satellite turning in space and homing in on Ty. Or more to the point, on to the collar he hated. Suddenly there was a beep, and a red flag showed up on the onscreen map.  
  
“Just off Lebanon Church Road, out near the county airport,” the younger officer said. “It’s not moving.”  
  
Officer Connolly’s mouth tightened and he frowned. “Lotta dive motels out there. He could be holed up there.” He turned to me before asking, “Do you keep cash in the house?”  
  
I didn’t understand why he was asking that, but I replied, “Well, yeah, pizza money, ice cream truck, you know. Not like I have a safe or anything.” I led the officers into the kitchen, to the drawer where I keep a few twenties and small bills. Never more than a hundred dollars for sure.  
  
It was empty.  
  
Both men turned suspicious faces toward me. “How much was in there?” asked Kowalski.  
  
I didn’t know, but I was sure there were at least two twenties. “At least forty. No more than sixty.” Again, I wondered why they were asking. “Look, Ty is welcome to anything in this house. He didn’t steal that money – if he took it, that’s fine with me.”  
  
“And if he ran, he’d need cash.” The hard cynical edge was back in Connolly’s rough voice. “He can’t even use a stolen credit card, not with that collar.”  
  
Once more, I felt my frustration growing. We were standing around here talking about Ty rather than going out and getting him back. I swallowed my pride and put aside my faith in him and said, “What if – just what if – he did run?” I pointed to the computer screen, to the flag that represented his position in the universe. “Isn’t the next step to go get him?”  
  
They couldn’t argue with that. Connolly pulled his mike off his shoulder and radioed his intention to apprehend Ty. He turned toward me. “I’ll need your tranq switch,” he said, referring to the remote paralyzer I’d been given when I’d picked up Ty.  
  
“It’s… it’s in my room.”  
  
“You don’t carry it on you?”  
  
I shook my head. “Never have. Never will.”  
  
I went and got it, was seconds away from dropping the thing into his hand when I reconsidered. I couldn’t give someone else that kind of control over Ty, whether or not he had run from me. “No,” I said, pulling my hand back and slipping the box into my pocket. “I’ll keep it.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“If you want it, then you get me. You have to take me with you.”  
  
  
  
  
The van stopped.  
  
Mel, who had been idly combing her fingers through my hair, lifted my head from her lap and laid it down on the carpeted floor.  
  
“Where… where…” I tried to make my mouth say more, but nothing doing.  
  
She knelt next to me, bent low to brush a kiss across my open lips. “Nothing more for you to worry about, slave,” she crooned before rising to her feet. I envied her size – she merely had to bend a bit at the waist to avoid hitting her head on the van’s ceiling.  
  
I scooted my body worm-like toward the side door, only to feel a sudden stinging tweak to my ear.  
  
“Stay still!” she hissed. “Do not move from that spot.”  
  
Part of me – the part that until recently had been a free man – wanted to yank at the ropes binding my wrists and ankles, wanted to roll myself closer to one of the shaded van windows and try kicking it out, wanted to attempt escape any way I could. But the new me – the slave me – just wanted to crawl somewhere and wait for Fate’s hand to move me.  
  
Some of that feeling I could blame on the sedative working its way out of my system. But not all of it.  
  
Ed peeked wordlessly at me through the curtain that separated the back of the van from the driver’s and passenger’s seats, making sure I hadn’t slipped the ropes, I guessed. I tugged at them to let him know I hadn’t—  
  
 _What the fuck am I doing?_ I wondered, shocked at my own apathy. _These people are fucking kidnapping me and I’m trying to make their jobs easier? Hell, Mel didn’t even bother to re-gag me after they’d gotten me into the van. What am I becoming?_  
  
The side door opened and Mel re-entered quickly, sliding the door open and shut all in one fluid motion, her entrance sandwiched in between. She sat down next to me, tucking her legs under her. “Did you miss me, slave?”  
  
“Fuck you, bitch.”  
  
Well. Seemed my mouth had started to obey me.  
  
She slapped me, damn hard, right in the face. “You better watch what you say to me.”  
  
Ironically, I remembered Marc, and how pissed he’d gotten when I’d done the same thing, and almost wanted to smile. I heard the driver’s side door open and close, the engine flare to life, felt the van start to move.  
  
The rebel in me flared to life as well. “Sure. Talk all tough to a guy who can’t fight back. Fucking coward.” I stared her down, which was all I could do in my position.  
  
She raised her eyebrows. Actually let out a husky satisfied laugh. “Good. I was wondering when you’d get your backbone back. Was afraid I’d have to hand an already broken slave to my employer tomorrow.”  
  
Tomorrow?  
  
I couldn’t voice the word, but she heard it loud and clear in my widened eyes.  
  
“Oh, yes.” She stroked my cheek as a mother does to her child. “She’s been patiently waiting for you.”  
  
The van stopped again and the engine shut off. We hadn’t gone more than five miles an hour and hadn’t driven longer than a minute. Parking lot, the logical part of my mind said. Mel rose to her knees and scooted over to the large side window.  
  
“Where are we?” I asked, not expecting an answer.  
  
“Motel Five,” she said absently, peeking around the shade covering the window. “We’ll crash here tonight, and catch a flight in the morning.” She replaced the heavy shade and raised her voice. “Two other cars in the lot, boys.”  
  
“I saw ‘em,” answered Mario from up front. “How do you want to play it?”  
  
She turned and stared at me, probably wondering how much of a fuss I’d make in public. Would she drug me again? If she did, they’d have to carry me in. Of course, if they didn’t untie my feet, they’d still have to carry me.  
  
If they didn’t drug me, they’d have to gag me, I figured. I didn’t know which option was more distasteful.  
  
Anyway, what would it get me, if I fought back? I remembered the day I was taken into custody, remembered the futility of the struggle.  
  
Before she could answer Mario, I spoke up. “Cut my feet loose; let me walk in.”  
  
“Fuck that,” I heard from the front.  
  
I never took my eyes from Mel’s. “You don’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust me. But I’m giving you something you want for something I want. No gag, no drug. Do that, and I’ll walk quietly into the room.”  
  
She didn’t hesitate. “Deal.”  
  
  
  
  
We were ten minutes’ away from my house. Connolly was driving; Kowalski sat shotgun with his laptop open; I sat in the back, behind the heavy metal grate.  
  
“So this is what it’s like to get arrested,” I joked.  
  
“Nah,” Kowalski said, playing along. “For that, I’d have had to cuff you first.”  
  
Connolly smiled as he merged into highway traffic. “He looks like he coulda made trouble. We might have had to break out the hobble.”  
  
“What’s that?” I asked.  
  
“Cuffs for the feet, so you can’t kick us or break out our windows.” The older officer described it nonchalantly, as if he were telling me how his radio worked. “You add a strap between the handcuffs and the leg cuffs and it’s a hobble.”  
  
“Sounds awful.”  
  
“So does slavery,” Kowalski shot back. There was about half a minute of silence and then he spoke again. “Sorry. My mouth gets away from me sometimes. It’s none of my business.”  
  
I couldn’t tell if he were apologizing for his belief about slavery, or for blurting it out without warning. But if I had to guess, I’d take the second one.  
  
“You never chained up your boy?” Connolly asked.  
  
I responded without thinking. “No!” But that was a lie, my brain reminded me. “OK, once. But he asked for it—”  
  
Damn. I knew how that sounded – like I had done it to punish him. I’d just dug myself a hole and now I wanted to fall down it. Both officers’ expressions told me their reactions to my words. Connolly’s raised eyebrows and knowing grin screamed _“Just as I suspected. Kinky bastard.”_  
  
But Kowalski was shaking his head, frowning, his eyes downturned. I could even see his back hunched and his shoulders drooping. He was disappointed, and I couldn’t blame him.  
  
“Look. It’s none of our business what goes on behind closed doors,” Connolly said to his younger partner. “I see a lot of things I don’t like in this line of work. Our job is to protect the rights of everybody, not just the people we like.” He shot a glance back toward me briefly as he drove. “You had the right to buy your boytoy and the right to keep him. He doesn’t have the right to run.”  
  
We were right back where we started – with Connolly believing that Ty was a runaway. I wanted to shake him by the shoulders, describe the relationship Ty and I had, explain that he would have been lost to me forever if I hadn’t bought him. But it would be wasted time, wasted words.  
  
“I… I want him back,” I began hesitantly. “I didn’t buy him so I could put him to work in my house, or show him off to my friends. And I’m not chasing him just to save face, or so I can punish him if he ran. I did all that and all this because I…” _Could I really admit this to them?_ “Because I love him and I don’t want to lose him.”  
  
Silence reigned once more. But two things happened that both surprised me and made me smile: Kowalski straightened up in his seat and stopped frowning; and Connolly’s cynical grin vanished, to be replaced by a blank expression.  
  
The senior officer cleared his throat. “Does Ty know this, Marc?” he asked, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice and failing.  
  
“Yes. He’s known for a long time.”  
  
Suddenly the car accelerated, pushing me back into the seat. “Ted,” he said to his partner, never taking his eyes from the road, “Make sure that backup’s been dispatched.” His glance flicked to the rear-view mirror and for a moment, his eyes met mine.  
  
“We’ll get him back. I promise.”


	5. Chapter 5

I held up my end of the bargain – didn’t say a word as they opened the van door and helped me down. Waited as Mario draped his trench coat over my shoulders, covering my bound hands. Walked the dozen steps to the motel room door, and stood still as Mel opened it wide.  
  
Once we were all inside, though, I figured our deal was at an end. “Where are you taking me?” Mel had mentioned a flight, so I knew we weren’t staying here in town.  
  
“If I thought you needed to know, slave, I would have told you,” said Mel as she pulled a laptop out of the duffel bag Ed had carried in. She set it down on the low dresser, next to the rather ancient television, and started the boot process. As it was starting up, she slid the heavy armchair from the corner of the room to a spot about six feet in front of the computer.  
  
“Guys, cut him loose and let him use the bathroom,” she said as she knelt down and began to tap the keyboard. “Hell, let him shower if he wants. But that door stays open.” She stopped typing for a moment and turned toward me. “Our deal still stands, slave. One more word from you and it’s off.”  
  
Ed pulled his pocket knife open and sliced the ropes. _Damn..._ It felt good to able to pull my arms forward. I popped my shoulder joints to relieve the stress.  
  
Mario poked me in the back. “Quit stalling and finish. I don’t get my jollies watching you shake the weasel.”  
  
Ed chuckled. “No, you just get ‘em watching Mel shake his weasel.”  
  
I opted out of the shower, if only for the fact that afterward I’d have to either put my dirty, sweaty clothes back on, or run around the room naked. Of course, Mel might not give me that choice at all, just simply refuse to return my clothes. When I returned to the main room, Mel motioned to the chair.  
  
“Have a seat, slave. And take off that shirt.” She tossed a couple of short lengths of rope to Ed. I didn’t know what her new game was, but I pulled my tee shirt up over my head and sat down. Once my wrists were firmly tied to the chair arms, she waved her two sidekicks out.  
  
But instead of climbing on me, or draping herself over me, as she had been doing almost constantly since they’d taken me, she turned away and moved to the laptop.  
  
There was my face filling the screen, almost like looking into a mirror. She fiddled with the image, zooming it out so that my entire upper body was in the frame. When she was satisfied with it, she tapped a few keys and waited.  
  
Suddenly, another face replaced mine on the screen. A woman’s face, and a damn familiar one. It was Corinne O’Hara, the much-younger trophy wife of Jim O’Hara.  
  
 _What the fuck was she doing talking to my kidnappers?_  
  
Mel stepped behind me, placed her hands on my naked shoulders almost possessively. “As you see, mission accomplished.”  
  
The platinum blonde on the screen nodded her head once, but responded, “Almost accomplished. When I have possession, that is when—”  
  
“That wasn’t the deal, Corinne, and you know it,” Mel interrupted. “I was hired to get him back. I have him now. When I get my fee, then you get your slave.”  
  
“What?” I demanded. “It was you, all along? You made him sell me? You fucking bitch!”  
  
Mel’s hand clamped over my mouth before I could say more. I watched Corinne’s carefully groomed brows narrow and her full lips thin in anger.  
  
“Why isn’t he gagged? One good yell and someone will call the police.”  
  
Mel tried to argue. “I’ve got it taken care of. My partners are in rooms on either side. No one close enough to hear.”  
  
But I was livid and rambling behind Mel’s hand, threatening violence to all involved. She pressed harder and harder on my mouth, trying desperately to shut me up.  
  
“No. Do it now,” ordered Corinne.  
  
I shook my head violently, dislodging her hand. “No! We had a de—”  
  
Mel stepped between me and the camera, yanked the silk scarf from her shoulder, grabbed both ends and wrapped them around my face, over my mouth. As she leaned close to tie the knot behind my head, the faintest whisper touched my ear.  
  
“Damn it, Ty… Keep quiet!”  
  
Her use of my name stunned me into silence. She straightened up, smoothed the gag taut over my unresisting lips, turned to face the webcam.  
  
“Now, we were discussing my fee, I believe.”  
  
  
  
  
We were about five minutes away from the imaginary flagpole when the unthinkable happened.  
  
“Fuck!” Kowalski yelled. “Signal’s gone!” He kept tapping keys as Connolly got on the radio.  
  
A power outage, they said at headquarters. Some idiot digging nearby had cut a buried power line. All their servers were down, with only emergency power available, and Ty simply wasn’t a priority. They’d even called off the backup units Kowalski had requested.  
  
“Didn’t we have his exact location?” I asked the younger man as we pulled into a parking lot to wait.  
  
“No,” he replied. “Only the Homeland Security server could give us that. Ours just pointed us in the right direction. The closer we got, the more accurate it got.”  
  
“How close did we get?” asked Connolly.  
  
Kowalski fiddled around with the keys. “Within half a mile of our current location.” He glanced around the busy highway, looked at all the signs. “There must be half a dozen motels just in sight of us. Can’t go checking each one.”  
  
“You’re not thinking it through, Teddy,” said the older officer. “You check in to a motel lately? Everywhere I go, you need a credit card.”  
  
I remembered him saying something about that in my kitchen, when we found that the cash was gone. “Sixty bucks won’t get you in any motel I’ve been in.”  
  
Connolly grinned knowingly. “That’s because you don’t stay in seedy dives. Where desk clerks don’t ask questions and cash is king.”  
  
“Well, are there any of those ‘seedy dives’ around here?” I asked.  
  
“Three… maybe four,” he answered. “They’re small, sometimes only a dozen rooms. Once you check in, you never really have to see the desk clerk again. And he doesn’t see who comes in or out of your room. No real lobby, no security.”  
  
Kowalski spoke up. “So we’re back to what I said. A handful of places. Can’t go checking each one.” He sighed. “Just gotta wait for the server to come back online.”  
  
More waiting… I felt so much like I had on the jet on the way to pick Ty up in St. Louis – frustrated, scared, not knowing if I’d ever see him again. And this time, there might not be a happy ending.  
  
  
  
  
I sat, still in disbelief, as Mel negotiated with her employer. Apparently, I was being sold yet again.  
  
Corinne seemed to get a thrill from my silence, if the predatory glimmer in her eye was any indication. “I may just have to keep him like that,” she said. “Get him on the plane first thing in the morning, Mel.”  
  
“Not a problem, once I have the money.”  
  
“Oh, you’ll have your money.” Corinne turned her avaricious attention to me, musing. “You know, I’ve never thought your name has suited you. So... white-trash. Just what were your parents thinking?”  
  
A hot wave of anger washed over me. I think if I had been free, I would have smashed that computer -- maybe before I could have given her a real piece of my mind. How the fuck could she dismiss my family that way?  
  
“I think I’ll call you… Charles,” she said after coldly considering me for a moment. “It’s perfect.”  
  
“As soon as the cash is in my account, I will deliver him any place you choose,” Mel said. She was standing in front of me again, blocking my view of the screen.  
  
And apparently, Corinne’s view of me. “Step out of the way,” she snapped at Mel. She then looked me carefully up and down, like a shopper considering a piece of merchandise. When she was finished inspecting me, she again addressed her words to me directly. “So sorry we can’t have a two-way conversation. That’ll have to wait till we’re together.”  
  
More than anything, I wanted to let loose with a muffled string of profanity. Since I was the only one who would understand it, I bit my lip behind the gag and remained silent, determined I wouldn’t give either of the bitches the satisfaction.  
  
Once they finished bargaining, Mel signed off, closed the computer, and stepped up to me. Stared down at me. Didn’t touch me, didn’t speak to me.  
  
Finally, after about a minute of that, she said, “Sorry I had to break our deal, but I wasn’t about to let you jeopardize all I’ve worked for.” She reached out and slid the scarf from my mouth.  
  
“All you’ve worked for,” I scoffed. “Kidnapping is work, now? Just another day at the office?”  
  
“I see. You want this back on,” she said, tugging lightly at the scarf now loosely tied around my neck. “Or should I go digging in that bag for something a little… stricter?”  
  
I lost my temper. “You know what? Fuck this. My life is one long string of assholes putting me here and putting me there and chaining me up and tying me down—” I didn’t even know what I was saying, but it felt good to get it out. “Do what you want, bitch. I don’t give a fuck anymore. Stick a fucking ball gag in my mouth, if you got one.”  
  
 _Damn, I’d pushed her too hard… she was smiling, oh fuck…_ She stepped over to the duffel and rooted around, finally pulling out a long sheathed hunting knife.  
  
I couldn’t even babble incoherently. Even though she was a few feet from me and the blade was safely behind the leather sheath, she could end my life in seconds without making a sound.  
  
“I’ve always found this more effective than a ball gag, don’t you agree, slave?”  
  
I nodded mutely, completely agreeing with her. My fear grew as she took a step closer, then another… She slid the knife free of its sheath and dropped the piece of leather to the floor.  
  
“Please…” I managed to say. “Promise, won’t say… not a word…”  
  
By the time I’d choked out those few syllables, she was standing before me, towering over me.  
  
“I want you.”  
  
That was all she said. She just stood there holding that knife point-down at her side, waiting for… I had no idea what she was waiting for.  
  
“You… want me?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Well, you’re the one holding the big knife…”  
  
She looked down at the blade, almost as if she were seeing it for the first time. When she looked back at me, her eyes were wide.  
  
“This isn’t… I wasn’t…”  
  
 _Great. Now she’s tongue-tied._  
  
She recovered quickly. “I wasn’t intending this for use as a weapon, merely a tool.” She tapped the ropes encircling my wrists in silent illustration. “Perhaps we can renew our deal.”  
  
I was puzzled. “I don’t make a fuss and you don’t gag or drug me?”  
  
“No. Something else you said, when you made that first deal with me.” She quoted me from memory. “‘I’m giving you something you want for something I want.’ And I think you know what I want.”  
  
“Well, that’s a shame. Because I want to be released.”  
  
“I have no problem with that—”  
  
“No, I don’t think you understand. All I want is to be let go. Not just untied. I want to go home.” As I said the last five words, my mind nudged me. _What home are you talking about?_ I shook off that internal voice, gritted my teeth and said, “If I get what I want, you can have… me. I won’t fight you.”  
  
“Not an option. But you see, slave, I have plenty of options.” She began to pace the floor in front of me. “I can have Ed and Mario come over and tie you to that bed.”  
  
“Which I’m guessing you don’t want to do, or you would have done it already. Try again.”  
  
She smiled again. When the fuck would I learn to keep my trap shut?  
  
  
  
  
The waiting was getting to me. We’d been sitting in the car for what felt like a week. Connolly had gotten out to buy a paper. Once he’d returned, his partner hit a fast food place.  
  
I leaned forward in my seat. Before I could open my mouth, though…  
  
“It’s been forty-five minutes,” Connolly muttered without looking up from his newspaper. “Are you always this impatient?”  
  
“Yeah, I kinda wondered about that.” Kowalski popped the last bite of his burger into his mouth and talked around the food. “You’re not like that when you play.”  
  
The comparisons the men were making between my personal life and how I played a game irritated me. “Not the same thing. When I play, and I screw up, the only thing that happens is number changes. If the damn power doesn’t come up soon, it isn’t just numbers that change.” I sighed. “Guess that doesn’t make much sense…”  
  
The younger cop had turned to look at me as I spoke. “Makes a lot of sense. And I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have said what I did.”  
  
Connolly turned the page of his paper and the two men fell into a relaxed banter. “You make a habit of runnin’ that mouth, you know.”  
  
“Partner, you ain’t the first one to tell me that.”  
  
I couldn’t relax. “How do you do it?” I asked them. “Sit in cars for hours on stakeout? I’d go nuts.”  
  
That made Connolly look up. “You’ve been watching too many TV shows. I think I’ve been on a handful of stakeouts in my whole career. And young Ted here?” He turned to address him. “You been on one yet?”  
  
He shook his head. “No, but I have been in this position before – waiting for the right conditions to act. One time, my former partner decided to wait for the babysitter to arrive before busting into a drug dealer’s place. He knew the perps weren’t going anywhere and he didn’t want the kids in the way…”  
  
I didn’t want to tell them to shut up. Didn’t want to ask again how long the repairs would take. But I just couldn’t sit there anymore, or I would snap. Probably say something that would end me up in cuffs.  
  
“Guys, could you let me out? I can’t just sit, I gotta move.”  
  
“Back doors are unlocked, Marc. Yep, you’ve watched too many TV shows…” Connolly shook his head, returned to reading his paper.  
  
I got out and paced the parking lot, looking at all the signs. Fast food, chain stores, motels… Which one was Ty in? Was he alone? Or was he on the move again?  
  
Had he really left me?  
  
  
  
  
“So what are we waiting for, Mel?” Ed asked as he finished attaching my bound wrists to an eyebolt he’d drilled into the top of the bed frame. _Guess they weren’t worried about room damage in a place like this…_  
  
“Yeah, what are you waiting for, Mel?” I saw no point in being timid. They were going to do what they wanted with me, and my words were the only weapon I had.  
  
Unfortunately, my words only made Mel flash that annoying cat-that-found-the-cream grin. She stood at the side of the bed, waiting patiently, arms crossed over her chest, watching Mario tie my ankles to the bed corners. When he’d finished the job, she answered Ed’s question. “When I get the phone call from Corinne, I check my account, and we’re done.”  
  
I was done. That’s really what she should have said, I thought.  
  
“Before you go,” Mel said to both guys, “I need you to hold him still.” She picked up her purse and opened it, pulled out the familiar silver case.  
  
 _No. Not that again…_  
  
I yanked fiercely at the ropes holding me down. “No! We had a deal, Mel!”  
  
Mario and Ed each took a side, pinning my shoulders firmly to the mattress.  
  
“NO!”  
  
“You need me to gag him, Mel?” Mario asked.  
  
She stared at me hard enough to bore a hole through me. “No,” she replied, never taking her eyes from my face. “He won’t be screaming long.”  
  
More senseless struggling. Another needle prick. Almost immediately I couldn’t think straight, just kept tugging at the thing that wouldn’t let me use my arms.  
  
They were speaking, but the words were like syrup in my ears, all dark and slow and sticky.  
  
 _“…stay and watch…”  
  
“…fuckin’ pervert…”_  
  
My legs wouldn’t move. Oh, God, no. Did someone set off the collar? I tried to talk but nothing came out.  
  
 _“…the fuck did you give him, Mel…?”  
  
“Get out, I told you…”_  
  
It felt warmer in the room, as if someone had both turned off the air conditioning and thrown a heavy quilt over me. That was weird – I didn’t remember feeling heat or cold last time. I tried to lift my head, but it was like trying to push a brick wall. A drop of sweat trickled down the middle of my forehead and dripped into my eye. I wanted to rub out the sting, but I couldn’t pull my hands down.  
  
Suddenly it was quiet. No more voices battling each other over me. There was just a face – a tiny face, framed in soft brown hair. It smiled at me.  
  
 _“Better now?”_  
  
Without the other voices, it was better, so I nodded. Another stinging sweat drop in the eye. Couldn’t reach… Why were my wrists tied?  
  
The face became a whole woman. Mel. I tried to say her name.  
  
 _“Shhh… You’ll be OK, just give it a couple minutes.”_  
  
She sat down on the bed next to me, started unbuttoning her blouse. I felt my fingers curl above my head, reaching out. Reaching for her. Trying to touch her, to get my hands on her.  
  
 _“…must remember to thank Matt one of these days. He mixes a fine cocktail…”_  
  
What was she talking about? We hadn’t been drinking.  
  
 _“…even I couldn’t believe that those drugs would mix.”_  
  
Drugs. That’s right, she’d drugged me. I tossed my head to shake out the cobwebs, gasped as scented peach silk dropped over my face.  
  
 _“Don’t worry, Ty. You won’t remember a thing…”_  
  
  
  
  
I’d considered dashing to the burger joint for a quick snack when I heard the words I had been waiting for.  
  
“Power’s up! We’re back in business.”  
  
I hopped in the back seat and leaned close to the metal gate, peered at the map on the computer screen. A red flag popped up.  
  
“Has he changed position from before?” asked Connolly. He folded his paper and started the car’s engine.  
  
Kowalski scrolled the image back and forth, zoomed in and back out again. “Doesn’t look like it. And it’s still not moving.” He clicked a cursor in a box at the top of the screen, typed ‘motels,’ and a dozen blue flags dotted the map. “Closest motel is something called Motel Five.”  
  
The older man put the car in Drive. “Let’s check it out.”  
  
  
  
  
I couldn’t see, I couldn’t move… and now I couldn’t breathe as something plunked itself down on my chest. I tried to buck it off, but just couldn’t get enough leverage.  
  
“Can’t… breathe…” I managed to say.  
  
I felt a warm willing nude body leaning over me, firm legs gripping my sides. Fingers massaged the muscles on my chest, crept up my shoulders and neck, found a home in my hair. I felt myself respond, heard myself exhale a satisfied sigh.  
  
“Marc…”  
  
A hand clamped itself over my mouth. Marc’s hands must have shrunk in the wash, I thought rather illogically. I tried to nibble his palm through the silk over my face.  
  
“Feeling it now, aren’t you, slave…” Mel snatched the fabric from my face and captured my lips before I could form a response.  
  
She was Mel and I was Slave. Not Marc and Ty. I thrust my hips up in an attempt to dislodge her, but I couldn’t move far with my ankles spread and bound.  
  
“Oh, no.” She kissed me again and again, and when I tried to turn my head away, she forced it back. “I don’t care what you want, or what you don’t want. I want you and I have you now.”  
  
“Hot… can’t breathe…” An almost constant trickle of sweat tickled the side of my face. “Please, Mel… off me, please…”  
  
“Not yet.” She picked up the sheet and dabbed my forehead, stopping the stream. “Don’t have much time…” Her lips traveled down my face, skipping down my naked chest, making their way toward the object of her desire. She would have made it, too – if her cell phone hadn’t picked the wrong moment to ring.  
  
  
  
  
As the officers did their thing with the desk clerk, I stood behind them with my hood up, my shades on. Didn’t want anyone recognizing me and making a big deal.  
  
“I haven’t seen anyone who looks like that,” the tired-looking twenty-something said as he stared at the picture of Ty on Kowalski’s laptop.  
  
Connolly spoke up. “How long have you been here today?”  
  
“I just started my shift about an hour ago.”  
  
 _Damn, we’re talking to the wrong guy,_ I thought. We’d tracked Ty here almost an hour and a half ago, before the power outage interrupted our search. The guys turned to leave when Kowalski stopped and asked, “How many of your rooms are occupied right now?”  
  
“Five. Six if you count mine. But if you want to go searching, you gotta have a warrant. I’m not losing my job.”  
  
  
  
  
She spoke on the phone, her voice all hollow, like she was talking through a tube. I couldn’t make out the words, but she was irritated. And she must have turned the heat up in the room, probably because she was naked and didn’t want to catch cold. She put the phone down and crawled back onto the bed beside me.  
  
“Mel… ‘s too hot…” My eyelids felt caked with sand. It was a chore keeping them open. For the thousandth time, I tried to pull my arms down, but they stayed firmly tied. “C’mon… lemme go…”  
  
“Oh, no. Not just yet…”  
  
She kissed me, long and slow. Eased her body back on top of me, suggestively ground her hips against the fabric of my sweats. To my shame, my cock twitched in response.  
  
Her eager fingers looped themselves into my waistband and started tugging it downward. “No, don’want you…”  
  
“Ah, slave. Your lips say no, but that body says yes.”  
  
She was right, it was practically shouting yes. But my head… my head.... something was wrong.  
  
I started rambling then, still not clear why I was there and why it was so damn hot and why couldn’t I move and would someone get this goddamn sweat off my face...  
  
She finally stopped. Just stopped what she was doing and looked at me.  
  
“Fuck me!” she yelled. I didn’t get it... thought that that’s what she was trying to do to me. I felt her lean in close and kiss my forehead. “Shit!”  
  
She jumped out of bed, grabbed her phone.  
  
  
  
  
We were almost out the lobby door when I lost it.  
  
“Listen, motherfucker!! My friend is here. We tracked him with GPS,” I said, yanking down my hood and throwing off my sunglasses. “Give us the room keys or I’m gonna kick every fucking door in the place off its hinges! Then you can explain that to your boss before he fires you!”  
  
Yeah, I was bluffing, but as pissed as I was, I didn’t care. Either it worked and he gave us the keys, or it didn’t and we were where we were right now.  
  
It worked.  
  
“This… this is all you need,” he said, fishing a single key out of his jeans pocket. “Opens every door.”  
  
I grabbed it, tossed it to Connolly, walked out the front door.  
  
“Where do we start?’ I asked them. Before either one of them could answer, Connolly’s radio beeped. Other than the words “Motel Five,” I couldn’t decipher what came out of the tinny speaker, but it made the older officer stop in his tracks.  
  
He grabbed his mic. “We’re here, on scene. In the motel parking lot.”  
  
I heard the response in snippets.  
  
 _“… medical emergency… …protectee… …assistance en route… …federal agent… …ten-fourteen…”_  
  
“Ten-Fourteen?” I asked them.  
  
Connolly turned to me with a now-I’ve-heard-it-all look. “That’s the code for undercover officer. There’s an undercover fed in room seven. With a medical emergency to a civilian protectee.”  
  
“Too coincidental.” Kowalski shook his head.  
  
“Don’t believe in ‘em. Let’s go.”  
  
  
  
  
I closed my eyes.  
  
When I opened them again, Mel was dressed and shaking my shoulder. She spoke to me, but her words were mere blobs of sound.  
  
Just easier to keep ‘em shut, I thought…  
  
She was pushing me again, wanting me to look at her. I blinked at the gleaming blade in her hand. She was coming toward me… leaning over me… bringing the knife down.  
  
I tried to move. Tried to roll away, maybe fall off the bed.  
  
She cut something over my head, brought my hands down to rest on my chest, sliced the ropes that bound them. I felt her mess with my feet.  
  
My eyes sagged shut again. Wish she’d turn down the heat…  
  
“Ty!”  
  
My name, I heard my name. And then felt a blessed coolness, as her hand rested gently on my forehead for a moment, only to be snatched back.  
  
“Again…” I begged her for that drop of fresh water in Hell.  
  
The door opened and Ed and Mario came in yelling, but Mel was afraid of them, since they were dressed as cops. She kept pointing to me. Must have been time to pack me off to Corinne…  
  
  
  
  
Connolly unlocked the door and Kowalski drew his weapon. I stood back, as I had been ordered to. I watched as they executed the perfect forced entry – identifying themselves, drawing their weapons, throwing the door wide.  
  
“Freeze! Drop the knife!”  
  
“Federal agent!!”  
  
“I said drop the knife, lady! I won’t say it again.”  
  
I heard a muted plunk before Kowalski peeked back out the door and waved me in. “It’s him!”  
  
Did I really want to see what was in that room? Had he been hurt? What the hell had his captor been doing with a knife?  
  
When I walked in, Connolly was cuffing a tiny brunette, but my eyes were drawn to Ty. It looked like someone had thrown a bucket of water on him – he was soaked through – and there were pieces of rope all over the bed. He was bare-chested, his eyes were closed, and he was tossing his head back and forth in misery.   
  
“Ambulance is on the way, Marc,” said Kowalski as I reached Ty’s side. I could feel heat radiating off his body. I put my hand on his blazing forehead and his convulsive head-tossing stopped. The weak smile he flashed at me ripped at my heart and left me stumbling for words. One question echoed through my mind, over and over, and I asked it out loud, even though I knew he could give me no answer.  
  
“What happened to you, Ty?”   
  
And how long would the whole story take?


	6. Chapter 6

A steady beep.  
  
The barely-there hum of fluorescent lights.  
  
An unmistakable odor of disinfectant.  
  
Occasionally, a muted PA announcement.  
  
Before I even opened my eyes, I knew I wasn’t trapped in a cheap motel anymore. I raised my hands to my face, just to let myself know that I could. When I moved them, I opened my eyes and smiled.  
  
 _Safe._  
  
Well, as safe as someone can feel when they wake up in the hospital.  
  
I did a quick physical inventory. Felt like every joint in my body was stiff, particularly my shoulders. Had a bit of a headache. My hand dropped from my forehead and one of my fingers grazed steel on the way down.  
  
The collar.  
  
I felt a quick stab of disappointment that the damn thing was still there. I mean, didn’t anyone have to remove it to treat me?  
  
As my level of consciousness grew, I began to wonder just how long I’d been there. I looked around the bed rails, searching for the button that would call a nurse. As I did, I noticed something at the foot of the bed that didn’t belong – a head, resting next to a baseball cap.  
  
Marc was sleeping sitting in the chair by my bed, his head bare alongside my left foot. _Good thing I don’t kick in my sleep,_ I thought. I tried to move my foot away, to give him a bit more room, but the slight movement woke him.  
  
“Ty,” he whispered, turning the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen toward me. They were brown, red and still a bit swollen, as if he’d been crying. How bad off was I? What was wrong with me?  
  
I opened my mouth to ask, but he moved so quickly, I didn’t get the chance. Before I knew it, he was out of the chair and leaning over me, wrapping his long fingers around my face, blurring the universe beyond. His lips on mine were hesitant and feather-light, as if he were afraid I might break.  
  
“Marc… missed you so much…” I mumbled between kisses. My arm snaked up around his neck, trying to pull him closer, but I noticed an IV tube in my hand. That brought me back to the here and now. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I here?”  
  
Marc sighed and pulled back, took my hand in his. “Bad drug reaction. The IV is flushing out your system. Doc said all the effects should pass by now.”  
  
“Mel… She drugged me at the house, when they took me…” I didn’t understand; that dosing had passed within hours.  
  
“And once again, just before we found you— Wait a sec, did you say ‘they’ took you?”  
  
“Yeah, Mel and Ed and Mario.” I pronounced the third name as he did, all drawn out and Italian. “Why?”  
  
He smiled. “Connolly knew that she had to have help. No way such a tiny woman armed with only a knife could pull this off alone, even if she’d drugged you. But she wouldn’t name anyone else, even after her supervisor threatened to fire her.”  
  
“Her supervisor? She was working for Corinne O’Hara!” I sat up in bed, suddenly remembering who had hired Mel to kidnap me. “She’s the one who did this, got her husband to sell me, then hired Mel to take me back! Someone’s gotta arrest her!”  
  
He shushed me and gently patted my chest, wordlessly convincing me to lie back down. “Everything’s been taken care of – well, except for Agent Wood’s accomplices. We didn’t know about them.”  
  
“Agent Wood?”  
  
“Yeah, Agent Melanie Wood. The only mistake that Corinne O’Hara made was hiring an undercover cop to kidnap you.”  
  
  
  
  
The most terrified I’d ever been – easily, this day topped all others in that race. It started when I found Ty lying in a puddle of his own sweat, burning from the inside out. It continued when he began seizing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The last straw was in the ER, when the doc gave me his condition.  
  
“We’ve gotten him stabilized, but your…” He stopped, obviously unwilling to use the term ‘slave.’ “He’s a very lucky man.”  
  
I shook my head. Lucky? With the shit he’d been through that day? “How can you say that?”  
  
“His temp was at 107 when they brought him in. If he’d gotten here an hour later he likely would have been permanently brain damaged.”  
  
“Why…? How…?” I felt stupid, not being able to get my thoughts to line up. But I’d never heard of someone with a body temp that high.  
  
The doctor took pity on me, I suppose. He led me into the waiting room, to a couple of chairs out of the way.  
  
“One of the drugs he was given has a dangerous side effect – it messes up the body’s ability to regulate its own temperature. Add a strong sedative to that, and you’ve got someone with a life-threatening condition, but who is incapable of recognizing it.”  
  
“But… who would give someone a combination like that?”  
  
“Each body is different…” He went on to describe various side effects and how often they happen, what had to be done to treat them, how they treated Ty – but I just nodded now and then, as if I completely understood.  
  
Which I didn’t.  
  
And I didn’t understand it later, as I sat by his bed, watching him sleep. Ty had never hurt anyone in his life, had done nothing worse than participate in the occasional practical joke. Why had all these bad things happened to him? I picked up one of his hands and kissed it. When I brushed back a stray lock of hair from his forehead, I noticed that it was just a little warm.  
  
“He’s got a low-grade fever,” whispered the nurse I hadn’t heard come in. “But that should be gone in a few hours.” She pointed to the monitor over his bed, explained the various numbers on it. “BP’s strong, pulse is steady. A little rest and he’ll be good as new.” Patting the hand that held his, she added, “He’s lucky.”  
  
Again with that word. I opened my mouth to say something I’d probably regret, but all that came out was “What?”  
  
“He’s lucky to have you.”  
  
  
  
  
It had been three days. Three days since Marc brought me home and ended the worst single day of my life.  
  
Sunday morning, he’d waited only about five minutes after the doctor declared me stable to request a discharge. When the doc objected, Marc rather calmly walked away from him and stepped to my bedside, extending a hand to help me out of bed.  
  
“I’m taking him. Now. He’s my property and you have no right to interfere. You can watch us walk out of here, or you can give me discharge papers and instructions for his care.”  
  
Something had changed inside him. Before, Marc was outwardly a guy who took life as it came – good, bad or otherwise. But his new demeanor was forceful, determined to get what he wanted.  
  
We left the hospital with the discharge, so I guess I couldn’t argue with the method he used to get it.  
  
On the way home, he mentioned to me that Greg had been his liaison with all the various law enforcement agencies involved, and updated me with what they’d found.  
  
“Corinne O’Hara is in jail,” he’d said. “Agent Wood—”  
  
“You mean Mel?”  
  
“Yes. She’s been suspended.” He’d stopped at a red light and glanced over at me. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”  
  
“Why? She almost killed me.”  
  
“But if it hadn’t been for her taking the assignment, Corinne would have hired a real kidnapper. Someone who would have taken you away forever.”  
  
“How did she get assigned to kidnap me?” I asked him. “Doesn’t seem to be something a federal agent gets ordered to do.”  
  
“Well, it helped that her sister is Special Agent Janice Wood.”  
  
The name didn’t sound familiar to me. “Who’s that?”  
  
“The Homeland Security agent assigned to our case. The one I was playing phone tag with. She was throwing all the roadblocks up in order to give her sister time to set up the job.”  
  
“I take it that she’s suspended too?”  
  
He shook his head and his fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly. “No. She was only carrying out the orders she’d been given.” The car sped up as Marc’s foot hit the accelerator pedal in frustration. “Can’t suspend someone for following orders.”  
  
  
  
  
They’d played with our lives, all of them. The O’Haras, the Wood sisters, their bosses…  
  
Greg had told me something I doubted I’d ever tell Ty, though. “They’ll probably fire Melanie Wood. What a nutball…”  
  
“What do you mean?” I asked.  
  
“The Pittsburgh cops—”  
  
“Connolly and Kowalski?”  
  
“Yep, that’s them. They had the crime lab check out her laptop. You wouldn’t believe the pictures of Ty she had on it.”  
  
I didn’t understand. “Pictures she took? Or pictures she found?”  
  
“Yes, to both. Tons of pics she’d found online – stuff of him in college, some off-ice fan pics, and some weird photoshopped shit.”  
  
Fan photoshops were nothing new. I’d seen some pretty cool ones of me over the years. “What was weird about them?”  
  
“I don’t know how to explain it. It was like someone ‘shopped him into a bondage movie. There were pics of him tied up, gagged – but it wasn’t really him. Just his face ‘shopped in.”  
  
I shuddered. “Who would do something like that?”  
  
“You’re lucky, Marc. You haven’t had any experience with wacko fans. A couple of my other clients have. Got restraining orders and everything.”  
  
“So you’re saying Melanie Wood – a federal agent, working for the government – is a crazy fangirl?”  
  
“I don’t have to say it. She’s practically admitted it.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“She didn’t get orders from her superiors to kidnap Ty. When her sister told her that she’d been assigned to Ty’s case, Melanie went to her own boss and suggested the undercover sting operation. Just to get her hands on Ty. And her plan almost worked.”  
  
“Her plan?”  
  
“She had agents on standby in St. Louis, ready to arrest Corinne O’Hara as soon as the money changed hands. The feds actually set up the ‘power outage’ at the police station – once her bosses found you guys on Ty’s trail. It was faked, in order to give her the time she needed to complete the operation.”  
  
I saw red. Everything that had happened – not just in the past day, but in the last couple weeks – seemed to be unseen hands playing with me and Ty as if we were toys. Shaping our lives like a kid molding castles in a sandbox.  
  
“But plans don’t always go the way you, uh, plan,” he continued. “She couldn’t foresee the reaction Ty would have to her drug cocktail. If he hadn’t, she could have carried out the final part of her plan, and Ty would have no memory of...”  
  
He didn’t need to say it. She would have raped him and left him there for us to find.  
  
  
  
  
Marc wouldn’t touch me, not once after we got home. Not that night, when we sat in his living room and I couldn’t take my eyes from That Spot.  
  
“That’s how I knew you’d been taken,” he’d told me, pointing to the place where Ed and Mario had zip-tied me to the chair. “There was blood on the floor – just a couple spots. When I found the blood on the chair arms, exactly the same distance apart as the ones on the floor…”  
  
He didn’t need to say any more. But instead of pulling me close, he got to his feet and strode to the back door. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”  
  
 _Stay here._ Sounded too much like an order. Didn’t stop me from obeying it, though. When he returned around ninety minutes later, I was still there, still sitting on the sofa, still waiting for him.  
  
“Why didn’t you go to bed?” he’d asked.  
  
“Is that what you wanted?” I hadn’t meant for it to come out all soft and submissive, but I was exhausted and just didn’t have the energy to fight.  
  
We got to bed, and he still wouldn’t touch me. I chalked it up that night to fatigue, but I couldn’t use that excuse the next day. Or the next. And I noticed that he was careful what he said to me, didn’t tell me to do anything, unless it was absolutely necessary. Three days in, I took something he said wrongly, and did so intentionally.  
  
“Road trip tomorrow,” he’d announced, that afternoon at lunchtime. “We leave pretty early, so you need to get packing.”  
  
“You want  me to pack your stuff for your trip?” I’d shot back. “Yes, Master. Anything you say, Master…”  
  
  
  
  
He called me Master. What the fuck had gotten into his head?  
  
It had been three days. Three days where I felt eggshells under my feet every time I spoke to him, or even stepped into the same room with him. And for the strangest reason -- he would do anything I told him to do.  
  
Like that first night back. I’d been stupid – had explained how I’d finally convinced the cops that he hadn’t run away, had mentioned the blood stains I’d found. Suddenly, the fear I’d felt that day hit me like a slap shot to the mask. I had to get out of that room – but more importantly, I had to get away from Ty before I lost it.  
  
I’d told him to stay there, meaning I didn’t want him following me outside. He didn’t need to be comforting me, not with all that had happened to him. Unfortunately, I was gone longer than I expected. When I got back, he was there, right where I left him. He hadn’t moved.  
  
Sure, it worried me that he couldn’t sleep through the night, but that at least I understood. I also understood him jumping every time the doorbell rang – so much so that I had it disconnected.  
  
But I couldn’t get what he was becoming. Almost like all the fight was gone. Calling me Master was just the last straw.  
  
“You wanna act like the slave? Fine!” I yelled, not waiting for him to answer my question. “Go upstairs, pack our stuff, have it ready in an hour!”  
  
His shoulders slumped, he stood up and took two steps, stopped dead. “Our stuff?”  
  
“Yes. I’m not leaving you home again. When I travel, you’re traveling with me.”  
  
He turned toward me and stared, as if he expected me to say or do something else. When I didn’t, he muttered, “You don’t trust me.”  
  
“It’s the rest of the world I don’t trust!” I shot a hand through my hair in frustration. “Ty, I can’t do it again. I can’t go through what I went through when I came home and found you gone.”  
  
Again Ty shot me this expectant look, like there was more to be said. When I remained silent, he shook his head and grumbled, “What you went through…?”  
  
I got defensive. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I wasn’t the one kidnapped.”  
  
“Yeah. And Mel touched me more in that one day, than you have in the last three days we’ve spent together.”  
  
 _She’d touched him!_ She’d fucking touched him, had put her fucking hands on him, tied him up, drugged him. She had no right! _He was mine!_ I turned my back on him, so he wouldn’t see how pissed I was and assume it was him making me angry.  
  
“You can’t face it! You literally can’t face it, Marc!” He grabbed me, spun me around. “She… she almost raped me -- didn’t you know that?”  
  
I shook my head, closed my eyes. No. Didn’t happen. Didn’t even almost happen. “You don’t remember… you were drugged… We got there in time!”  
  
“Yeah. Keep telling yourself that. And maybe…” His voice tailed off. “Forget it,” he said, turning toward the staircase. “I’ll be upstairs. Packing.”  
  
  
  
  
I overreacted. Threw what had happened to me in his face. And still, he wouldn’t engage.  
  
On my way upstairs, I realized that I didn’t have a clue what I wanted from him. Did I truly want him to fight with me? No. I’d never understood couples who lived in that kind of drama mess.  
  
Did I want him teary-eyed and comforting? I had to be honest and say no to that as well. Mushy just wasn’t him.  
  
No, the part of him that had always, always captivated me was his ability to smile through almost anything. And that was something I hadn’t seen in days. Sure, I missed his touch, his levity, his easygoing manner. But it was his smile that brightened my world.  
  
I pulled out Marc’s suitcases from the closet, debated putting one back. Could I fit his stuff and mine in one bag? Not like I needed much in the way of clothes, and his suits went in a garment bag anyway…  
  
“What are you doing?” asked Marc from the door.  
  
He’d asked the question my own subconscious had been asking me since I’d opened the closet door. Difference was, I could ignore the voice inside.  
  
“Just what I said I was doing. Packing.”  
  
I expected him to tell me to stop. Or to step closer and grab my hands, or take me in his arms. I didn’t expect him to sit down on his bed and watch me.  
  
I tossed in the standard roadtrip kit: tee-shirts, underwear, shorts, flip-flops…  
  
“Don’t forget swim trunks. Both hotels have indoor pools.”  
  
He was really letting me do this, wasn’t even trying to stop me! “Where do you keep ‘em?” I asked.  
  
He pointed to a drawer. “There’s two in there, one should fit you.”  
  
I got halfway there, stopped. “What the fuck am I doing?”  
  
“I asked you first.”  
  
I balled up my fists, pissed that I couldn’t explain. “You told me to pack!”  
  
“Yeah. And you couldn’t tell me ‘no’? ‘Fuck off’? ‘Do it yourself’?”  
  
“No! I couldn’t!” I shouted.  
  
“Why not?” he countered, just as loudly.  
  
He got off the bed, stepped right up to me.  
  
“Why not?” he repeated.  
  
“I… I don’t…”  
  
He poked me in the chest. “Why not? Why can’t you tell me ‘no’?”  
  
The chest pokes brought out an instinctual reaction. I pushed against him in challenge. “Don’t start…”  
  
“So you’re giving me orders now, eh?” he said, poking me again.  
  
No. I was not going to fight with him. No matter how transparent he was being. I didn’t say anything; I just walked out of the room.  
  
And he let me go.  
  
  
  
  
At least I’d gotten him to stop packing.  
  
But as I finished the job and pulled the last zipper shut, I heard him step into the room behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said without turning around. “Shouldn’t have pushed you.”  
  
He didn’t say anything. Just sat down on his side of the bed and fixed his eyes on the nearest wall.  
  
“You look tired,” I said.  
  
He nodded, but made no move to get in bed.  
  
I knew what I wanted to do: grab him, pull him close, kiss him until neither one of us could think straight, and spend the rest of the night re-discovering each other. Problem was, I didn’t know how he felt, whether he was ready to go there so soon.  
  
More importantly, I was pretty sure that if I asked, he’d simply say yes. Whether he wanted it or not. So of course, I did nothing.  
  
I think I was afraid – afraid that he’d flinch, or shy away from me. Everyone has heard stories of how victims of violence push their families away, but it wasn’t a story to me. I’d seen it lived.  
  
One of my school friends, Patrice, had a sister. One day, on her way home, some dirtbag grabbed her and raped her. The family went through a lot of therapy to help her get through it, but it was such a long time before she could come back to school. Longer before she could look a guy in the eye, let alone let one touch her.  
  
We hadn’t talked about it, Pat and I, until the day he stopped by my place, looking like a guy who’d lost his best friend.  
  
 _“She blames herself! I don’t get it! She didn’t do anything wrong!”  
  
“Who says she did?”  
  
“She does! I mean, we tell her that she didn’t, but it’s like she doesn’t hear us. She just keeps going on and on… Should have fought harder… should have screamed louder, shouldn’t have worn those clothes…”_  
  
I didn’t know what to say to him then. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to need more than someone outside his family to talk to. I didn’t have to say anything, just let him let it out.  
  
I only wish I could have been there for his sister. We watched her personality change, day by day. Watched her get quieter, more withdrawn. Just like Ty.  
  
I wondered if that roadtrip was just what we needed...  
  


  
The roadtrip? This is just all I need, I thought to myself. Three more days where Marc tries to get me to talk about What’s Wrong With Me. Three more days he won’t be listening to my repeated ‘I don’t know’s’.  
  
And I wasn’t lying when I told him that I didn’t know. I should have been out-of-my-head happy to be rescued from the fate, the life that Corinne O’Hara had for me. Should have been overjoyed to be back with Marc, and safe.  
  
But it’s tough to be overjoyed when the one you love won’t touch you, or barely says a word to you except for “What’s wrong?”  
  
And the night before we left was a prime example. Instead of sliding into bed and cuddling, he propped up his pillows and started reading from that damn owner’s document pile. “I’ve gotta make sure there aren’t rules for traveling,” he explained.  
  
“Let me help – give me some of those,” I suggested, but he just shook his head.  
  
“You might as well get some sleep.” A glimmer of a smile touched his lips. “You know what happens to guys who sleep on the plane.”  
  
If he were joking again, maybe things were getting back to normal.  
  
But nothing prepared me for the joking I got when we arrived at the airport.  
  
“Yo! Conks!” hollered Max, as soon as he caught sight of me. As we walked up to him he said, “The guys have decided that we need a new waterboy in the dressing room. Vote’s unanimous – Tanger just isn’t pulling his weight.”  
  
Kris’s face flushed, as it always did when he was teased.  
  
I played along. “Haven’t you been here long enough to shoot back at him yet, Tanger?”  
  
Pascal erupted in a belly laugh. “Ha! All his shots go wide and miss!”  
  
I glanced around the room. There were quite a few guys there I hadn’t played with, but enough were former teammates. Brooks approached and clapped me on the back before gathering me into a warm bear hug.  
  
“Good to see you up and about,” he said quietly. “Sid let me know what happened to you.” He bent his head close to my ear. “Pretty much, it’s just Sid and me that know. Didn’t figure you’d want that kind of thing made public.”  
  
I nodded, my throat too choked up to say anything.  
  
He held me out at arms’ length and locked his intense gaze with mine. “You let me know if you need anything, you got that?”  
  
I nodded again, felt a third hand on my shoulders, turned to see Sid smiling.  
  
“Would’ve come to visit you, but they’d already cut you loose.”  
  
I appreciated how he didn’t mention the word ‘hospital’ within earshot of the other guys. “They couldn’t argue with—” I looked all around, but Marc seemed to have vanished. “Where’s Flower? He was right behind me a minute ago.”  
  
Sid shrugged his shoulders. “He probably got recognized, signing a few autographs. You know him, can’t say no.”  
  
Ironic, that he was throwing that accusation in my face just the night before. If I can’t say no, it’s bad. For him, it’s something that gets praise. I turned to look around once more and found him walking slowly toward the three of us, his brows furrowed.  
  
“What’s wrong?” I whispered as he stepped behind me.  
  
“Not what. Who,” he said cryptically. Before I could ask him to explain, he raised a hand and smiled. “Tell ya later, OK?”  
  
He was smiling again. Could I have been wrong about the trip?


	7. Chapter 7

I kept the travel restrictions on Ty to myself. After all he’d just been through, I didn’t want him feeling like there was any difference between him and any other guy on the plane.  
  
But after registering him as a slave passenger, signing a pass giving him official permission to travel, and signing a waiver taking full responsibility for him, I was still brooding over how to handle his post-abduction self. Should I just pretend like it hadn’t happened? Give him time to recover on his own? Or give him more attention and support? I didn’t want to force my way on him and I certainly didn’t want a negative reaction from him.  
  
I’d made up my mind by the time I was on my way back to our departure gate. I’d give him the time he needed and let him determine when he felt comfortable with me touching him—  
  
I caught sight of him talking to Max. Occasionally, Max’s elbow shot out as a punctuation mark to something he said. Ty never flinched, nor did he try to avoid it.  
  
 _It’s just Max_ , I thought. _He must just feel safe around him._ But a few minutes later, Brooksie found his way through the crowd of teammates to Ty’s side. The hug he gave seemed to use his whole body – and Ty returned it willingly, almost eagerly.  
  
Sid touched him then, patting him on the back. No difference. He smiled and glanced around, but made no move to back away or give a defensive posture.  
  
I’d been wrong. All this time, he’d been OK with physical contact, and I was the one holding back. I smiled at the irony.  
  
And by the time we got to the hotel that afternoon, I saw the road ahead get clearer. I knew just what I’d do. We dropped our stuff as soon as we got in, and Ty plopped down on the bed and grabbed the remote.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
He seemed surprised I’d asked. “Making myself comfy while you go eat. You are going to the team meal, I assume?”  
  
“No. No, I’m not,” I said, sliding the remote from his unresisting grip. “We’ll order room service… later.” I shut off the TV.  
  
He got the picture, though – loud and clear. “You were telling me something at the airport.”  
  
“Yes I was.” I stepped to the side of the bed. “Get up.”  
  
He looked at me quizzically, but did as I asked, standing up in front of me.  
  
“You’re not afraid of me – of me touching you.”  
  
He shook his head. “No, why should I be?”  
  
“Some people are… after what you…” I couldn’t finish the thought.  
  
“I think I know the difference between someone who wants to hurt me and someone who doesn’t.”  
  
“That’s fair. But can you understand my point of view? You’ve been so quiet since…”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about that.”  
  
My fingers itched to touch him then, to hold him close, to comfort away his pain. But I needed to be strong, needed to do things a certain way. “Ty, I have an idea how we can both get past this. Will you listen?”  
  
“It’s gonna take more than ideas and tricks, Marc. It’s gonna take time.”  
  
“Yes, I know.” I took a deep breath and said, “You’ve been doing anything I’ve told you to do since I brought you home from the hospital. And I’ve been afraid to touch you – afraid that you’d either pull back—”  
  
“I woudn’t, not from you--.”  
  
“Let me finish. Because letting me, even if you didn’t want to? That would be worse. So I think I’ve come up with a plan.” I held out my arms from my sides.  
  
“ _Touche-moi,_ Ty. Do to me what you want done to you.”  
  
  
  
  
Sure, it was an order. But it was one that placed total control in my hands – both control of myself and control over Marc.  
  
“I’ll do it, on one condition.”  
  
“Name it.”  
  
“You can do nothing. Unless I tell you to, you can’t even scratch your own balls if they itch. Deal?”  
  
His eyes rose heavenward, as if he was thinking. “Can I speak?”  
  
“Now?”  
  
He shook his head. “No, once we start.”  
  
Now it was my turn to consider. Not allowing him to speak would be too much like slapping a piece of duct tape over his mouth, and I didn’t want darkness getting between us. “Yes. Say anything you want. Ask anything you want. But you don’t move unless I tell you to. Got it?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
He remained there, standing before me, arms outstretched in invitation. I reached up and removed his ever-present hat, tossed it away. My hands shot through his long silky hair and I combed the strands between my fingers. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.  
  
“You can lower your arms, Marc,” I whispered, taking each wrist in my hands and guiding them gently to his sides. I couldn’t resist running my hands up his arms, feeling the warm muscles beneath the pink starched cotton dress shirt. He gave a little shiver then, but made no move to help or guide me. I loosened his silk tie, the same shade of brown as his eyes. “Take it off.”  
  
He did, but took his own sweet time doing it, his wide lust-filled eyes never leaving my face. “You… you aren’t gonna need this for anything, are you?” he asked.  
  
“Oh, no. I have you right where I want you.”  
  
“Good,” he said, throwing the tie across the room.  
  
I cleared my throat. “Did I tell you to do that?”  
  
His eyes widened. “I asked—”  
  
I placed my fingers gently against his lips. “Shhh…” His head fell back, his eyes closed and he smiled; I felt the barest hum on my fingertips. “Marc?” He looked back up at me. “Kiss me.”  
  
I was stupid. Just opened that door and let him sail right through, let his lips fall on mine and his tongue intrude and all I could think was that he’d stop, right? He’d let me breathe? But he didn’t, he kept delving deeper and all without raising a hand to touch me or an arm to pull me closer. He followed all my instructions to the letter, except one.  
  
Part of him did rise to the occasion. And I don’t know whether or not he tried to keep it under control, or simply wrote it off as uncontrollable. Didn’t care, either.  
  
The kiss morphed from intense and soul-searching to light and playful. “Ty,” he said between kisses, “I’m sorry… about… my… reaction…” He gasped and hissed as I unbuckled his belt and unzipped his fly, but obediently kept kissing.  
  
I pulled my head back to let him off the hook. His eyes widened in anticipation, a drop of sweat rolled down his face.  
  
“You aren’t sorry,” I said as I pulled his pants and shorts down to his knees, dropped to my own knees before him. “No, Marc, I’d have to say that you’re pretty damn proud.”  
  
I wasn’t gentle or gradual, didn’t prepare him for the shock of my mouth on his prick. I just plowed ahead and took as much of him as I could, loving the salty taste of him on my tongue. I expected to feel his hands on me as I sucked him, his fingers tangling in my hair, but when I looked up, he had one of his own wrists firmly in the grasp of the other, locked behind his neck.  
  
I began to wonder: what would it take to break that self-control?  
  
  
  
  
I held on in that storm, held on for dear life as his mouth brought me to the brink. I couldn’t risk looking down at him, or I would have thrown the rules overboard and grabbed him.  
  
He was mine, but I had willingly given him the lead here, let him set the pace, allowed him to make up the rules. I could feel my fingernails begin to dig into the flesh of my wrist.  
  
“Ty,” I groaned. “Ty, _laisse-moi te toucher…_ Let me touch you…”  
  
“Mm-mm,” he hummed onto my shaft, shaking his head no.  
  
“Please!” I begged him, but it wasn’t really for permission to act. I felt myself losing my will to continue the game. I wanted him, as I’d wanted him for the three days I’d had him home with me. Now he was here, and doing such fantastic things with his tongue, and all I could do was stare at the ceiling and hope that he’d change his mind.  
  
“Ty!” His name felt ripped from my throat. “Can’t… stop…” Waves of pleasure were coursing through me. I knew that if I let him continue, things would get ugly – so I braced myself and pulled back.  
  
I heard my cock pop out of his mouth.  
  
Finally, I got the strength to look down at him. He was grinning like an idiot, eyes raised to mine. “Wondered just how far I could push you,” he said as he got to his feet.  
  
Suppressing my own grin, I placed both hands on his shoulders and shoved him back onto the bed. As I kicked my pants off my ankles, I said, “Part one of the game is over.”  
  
He sat up and cocked his head, puzzled. “Part one?”  
  
“I told you to ‘do to me what you want done to you.’ I assume that you followed my order?” He said nothing as I knelt in front of him, unzipped his fly and took him out. His hands braced against the bed and his body stiffened at the first touch of my tongue to his cock. I focused on the head, teasing the drops of pre-cum to the surface and lapping them up eagerly.  
  
“Marc… oh, like heaven, baby…”  
  
I smiled; he always had been the more vocal one. _Wonder what else I could get him to say…_ I pulled back, ran my tongue down his length and back up again, poised my open mouth over his head. “Ty…? Tell me how much you want this.”  
  
“Oh… you bastard…” he growled, his fingers tangling in the bedcovers.  
  
I licked his thick hard cock like a popsicle, once, twice. “Ty, tell me.” I paused. “Or I’ll stop.”  
  
“No!” he croaked. “I want it, Marc! Want it bad, oh, please, suck me now, I’ll do anything…”  
  
My ears figuratively pricked up. “Anything?”  
  
  
  
  
Yeah, I’d said it. Anything. But his mouth was like velvet and so hot on me, encasing me, enveloping me, I would have offered anything I had for him to continue.  
  
He straightened his back but remained on his knees, gripping my shaft tightly with his hand. “I need a promise from you.”  
  
His accented voice was husky with lust, but determined and clear. He wasn’t playing a game with me now.  
  
“Name it.”  
  
He swallowed and met my gaze squarely. “Don’t ever let me do anything you aren’t willing to do. In bed or out.” He reached out and touched the wide band of steel locked around my neck. “This gives me the right, but my love for you... is stronger than this.”  
  
It felt strange to be discussing something so earth-shattering with someone whose hand was wrapped around my cock, but the words needed to be said. More importantly, they needed to be heard.  
  
“Marc, we had this discussion the day after you brought me home. The law didn’t make me yours. They can’t tell me who I love. Or who I want.”  
  
His face broke into a smile so stunning, it could have been used as a spotlight. Suddenly he remembered where his hand was and turned his attention back to it. “Seems like I have a debt to pay,” he said, lowering his head.  
  
I stopped him with a hand to his chin. “No. No debts. No games, not now.” He looked a bit disappointed. “Marc, just love me. All I ask.”  
  
“Same here, _mon coeur._ Same here.”  
  
  
  
  
Somehow, our remaining clothes ended up in a pile between the beds. One piece at a time, it seemed, something got removed and tossed, until we were lying between cool white sheets, naked as the day we were born.  
  
I couldn’t get enough of him, wanted to touch and taste every inch of him. I knew how frustrated people who diet or who stop smoking were – and now I knew that almost losing Ty had driven me to that point.  
  
Seemed that he felt the same way, if the hands that roamed over my body were any indication. But when his fingers imprisoned my face and his lips found mine, they stole away all rational thought, as well as any thoughts of frustration. He was here, in my arms, in my bed -- his own arms as wide open as his heart.  
  
I was feverish, then, had to have him closer. But capturing him with my arms wasn’t enough. I reached downward, cupping his ass, wrapping one leg around his, feeling the heat in that long hard cock that twitched against mine.  
  
I wasn’t sure which way Ty wanted me, not having gone far enough in the ‘do what you want done to you’ game – but he let me know without having to ask.  
  
“Oh, baby…” he sighed. “Want you inside me…”  
  
My mischievous finger tickled his asshole, a prelude of things to come.  
  
“That can be arranged,” I said. “But first…”  
  
I found the lube I’d hidden in my suitcase on the floor and was back on top of him almost before Ty knew what I was doing.  
  
“Mmm. So glad you’re prepared…” he murmured, and then gasped as my slick fingers slid into him, slowly, firmly. I began to roll my hips to the rhythm of those fingers, began to thrust my cock back and forth along his length.  
  
 _“Relax, bébé… laisse-moi t’aimer…”_  
  
His eyes slammed shut, his lips parted in ecstasy at the sound of my encouraging whisper, just as I knew they would. I kissed those lips gently, teasingly even, punctuating more words he wouldn’t understand.  
  
 _“T’es à moi, toujours… jamais je ne te laisserai partir… je te le promets...”_  
  
Back… forth… again… again… I watched him grit his teeth against the sensations, I nibbled the tiny cleft on his chin, but kept the pace, heard his moan of approval. Back… forth… give… take…  
  
And when I knew he was ready, when his breaths came in soft pants to that same rocking rhythm, I swung behind him and replaced fingers with my cock. I watched his fingers curl into the sheet as I thrust, heard his animal-like groans as I hit that spot deep within him.  
  
“Oh, Marc… gonna come…”  
  
“Go, _mon homme_ , I’m right behind you…”  
  
The air around us seemed electric, as if lightning had struck close by. His back arched and his mouth opened wide, and then he was there, taut and grasping at that charged air. I glanced at his curled fingers and remembered feeling them on me, all those times, all that joy in his hands touching me, teasing me, and I was gone.  
  
Afterward, he lay in my arms, my fingers and his entwined, every muscle in his body fully relaxed. I knew that our problems weren’t over, that his memories of the past week were still fresh, but at least we’d be facing them together.  
  
I wasn’t sure if he was asleep or just thinking, so I nibbled his shoulder, but he didn’t stir. Then my eyes fastened on that band of steel around his neck, just wide enough to hide…  
  
I slid it up about an inch and kissed the soft skin beneath it.  
  
“Marc, what are you doing?” he asked drowsily.  
  
“Leaving something where no one will see,” I said. I took the flesh of his neck in my mouth and sucked – like a vampire without fangs. After a minute, a perfect red love-bite had formed there, and I placed the collar back over it to hide it.  
  
I lay back and was almost asleep when I felt him nudge me.  
  
“Someone’s at the door.”  
  
  
  
  
I hoped our little interlude hadn’t gotten him into trouble. I peered at the clock radio on the bedside table – a little after two in the afternoon.  
  
His smile on returning to me said it all. “Some of the guys are going for the optional skate, but Johnny’s in, so they don’t need me.”  
  
I hoped they hadn’t used that choice of words – it sounded a little insulting to me. “They actually told you they don’t need you?”  
  
He blushed. “Actually, Max told me that there’s someone who needs me more,” he mumbled sheepishly.  
  
“Hey – you were the one who told me that you can’t keep secrets in a dressing room.”  
  
He smiled, leaned in close and kissed me. “I’ve never wanted to keep you a secret.”  
  
“Good thing,” I retorted. “I don’t travel well in the cargo hold.”  
  
I was surprised to see his smile melt away, his mouth form an amazed O. “They don’t… No, they don’t make you… No!”  
  
“English, Marc.” I wasn’t really needling him on his communication skills; I knew that he tended to lose command of either language when he became flustered. “Slow down and tell me again.”  
  
“I read the file last night. You don’t travel that way. You have to have a seat—”  
  
I clapped hands to his face, forced him to look at me. “I was making a joke, love.” But part of my heart warmed to the force of his emotional protest. The mere idea that I was less of a person because of my legal status bothered him.  
  
“I… I can’t joke about that,” he said, dropping his gaze.  
  
I started to open my mouth to say something, but Marc’s phone interrupted. He answered it, said it was Greg and that he wanted to talk to me.  
  
“Ty, I have some news. A judge re-opened your case.”  
  
I almost dropped the phone. “I… I didn’t realize I had a case.”  
  
“Apparently, all the publicity over Corinne’s arrest made the judge who signed off on Jim O’Hara’s petition decide to look at all the facts a bit further.”  
  
“Which means what?”  
  
There was silence, then a measured response. “There’s a possibility that Judge Anderson could overturn his earlier ruling, resetting your status to the day you were sold.”  
  
 _I could be free,_ I thought. _Get this damn collar off and go back to my life…_ But as I listened to Greg’s voice, my eyes were drawn to the pleasantly distracting sight of Marc stretching out catlike on the rumpled sheets.  
  
I was getting ahead of myself. Greg used the word possibility, so there was no sense dwelling on it now.  
  
“What do I have to do?”  
  
“Nothing right this moment. The court has appointed a lawyer to represent you, so technically you don’t even have to be here for the hearing.”  
  
Wait,” I interrupted. “There’s going to be a hearing? The judge isn’t just considering this and then ruling?”  
  
Those words made Marc sit up and stare at me, his eyes wide in shock.  
  
  
  
  
Hearing.  
  
Judge.  
  
Ruling.  
  
A spark of irritation hit me as I realized that Greg, my agent, asked to speak to Ty. Went right to him, didn’t go through me.  
  
I tried to keep the sarcastic tone out of my voice. “Anything I need to know?”  
  
Ty’s face flushed and his mouth dropped open. “I’m sorry. Let me just get the rest of the details.”  
  
Suddenly I felt guilty for feeling so entitled. Ty had a right to have a private conversation without needing to report to me afterward. So there I sat, feeling irritated at myself for feeling guilty about feeling irritated at Greg and Ty.  
  
Before I could make sense of my conflicting emotions, Ty put the phone down and sat down on the bed next to me. “When O’Hara sold me, the first thing he had to do was file a petition with the federal court in St. Louis.”  
  
“I’ve seen it. It’s in your file.”  
  
“Well, the judge who signed the petition allowing him to sell me – Judge Anderson – has seen all the news reports about Corinne and now wants to re-open the case.”  
  
“Re-open? You mean reconsider?”  
  
Ty nodded, his face oddly expressionless. “There’s no guarantee he won’t simply get the answers he wants from O’Hara and leave things the way they are.”  
  
 _Things the way they are? Right now, that means he stays mine. My property._ “But there’s no guarantees that he won’t. Which leaves you… where?” I couldn’t say the word free – it was too hard to imagine.  
  
He sighed. “I wish I knew.”  
  
That same cold shiver I got when I came home and found him gone? It was back, and twice as strong. I saw hope spark in those beautiful gray eyes – hope for his old life and hope for freedom, and how the fuck could I compete with that?  
  
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t get past the first word. “What…?” I felt stupid, powerless. Suddenly I felt the warmth of his hand on my cheek.  
  
“Marc, I don’t know. Even if you could ask the right questions, I wouldn’t know the answers anyway.”  
  
I leaned into his touch, turned my face, kissed his reassuring palm. _Now who was comforting whom?_ “Mine…” I whispered into his open hand.  
  
I felt his other arm encircle me.  
  
“Always,” he said.  
  
  
  
  
Had I really lied to him? Flat-out lied right to his face, with the both of us still naked and sweaty from our time together?  
  
Sure, I could say that I was just trying to reassure him that my feelings weren’t going to change. And that wasn’t a lie – I would always love him, no matter what happened, no matter what decision a judge made.  
  
But I’d told him that I’d always be his, and while it may not have been a complete lie, it wasn’t the whole truth either. If Judge Anderson set me free, I had no idea what that would mean for us. Would I go back to my life in St. Louis? See Marc whenever our schedules meshed, like before?  
  
Questions like that tugged at me over the next three days, until Greg contacted us once more. It was the final night of the roadtrip, and we were on the flight headed home. He’d called and talked to Marc for a bit before asking for me.  
  
“OK, the hearing is tomorrow at 3:00…”  
  
“Tomorrow?”  
  
“I did tell you that you don’t have to be there, didn’t I?” he asked, sounding a bit flustered. “You have a court-appointed representative looking out for your interests.”  
  
But I didn’t want some stranger to have that kind of sway over my future. And if I couldn’t figure out what my best interests were, how could someone who’d never met me do so? “Greg, am I allowed to be there?”  
  
“Well, yeah, I suppose… I mean, you gotta get Marc’s permission to travel, and there’s some forms he needs to sign with the airline before you can fly.”  
  
 _Permission to travel._ To me, it sounded too much like the pass a nineteenth-century slave needed to have in order to leave his master’s plantation. And although my head understood the idea, deep down inside I resented it.  
  
Marc must have either felt that resentment, or I was doing a shitty job keeping my expressions in check. “What’s wrong?” he asked.  
  
I didn’t trust myself to open up and tell him all that was bugging me, or I likely wouldn’t stop until the flight home was landing. “Greg says that the hearing’s tomorrow afternoon.”  
  
“Did you want to go?”  
  
“Gonna give me your permission?” I shot back, regretting the words as soon as I’d said them.  
  
But he didn’t say a word. Didn’t give me an irritated glare. He simply twined his fingers with mine and said, “Wasn’t going to tell you about that. I guess Greg did, huh?”  
  
I nodded, incapable of coherent speech at that moment. The enormity of my situation hit me like a ton of bricks. I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and let it all out, but the jet we were in seemed to be short on holes.  
  
He leaned close to me, laid his head on my shoulder, murmured words in the most comforting voice I’d ever heard. “It’s three pieces of paper, Ty. Just legal shit. They don’t mean anything.”  
  
He was bringing my own words to mind, letting me know that he believed them too, even when it seemed that I’d lost my faith.


	8. Chapter 8

Once more, I walked into an empty house without him. At least this time, though, I knew where he was.  
  
I’d put him on the next available flight to St. Louis as soon as we’d landed, with Greg’s promise that he’d meet him at the airport to claim him. Add one more complication to slave travel: if one travels without his owner, when he reaches his destination, he is only released after being claimed by his owner’s representative – which in my case was Greg.  
  
I’d stood in the terminal and watched him leave. What if the judge reconsidered and set him free? Would he stay in St. Louis or end up somewhere else?  
  
What if he never came home?  
  
It took everything in me not to break down right there in public, but I managed to hold it together until I got out to my car. The other cars that had surrounded it in Extended Parking days before were long gone – well, except for one familiar Land Rover, parked right next to mine.  
  
As I approached, Sid hopped out of the driver’s side door and waited, utter sympathy on his face. More than anything, I wanted to smile and say something like, “He isn’t dead, Sid,” but my own face felt stiff and paralyzed. I couldn’t pretend to be anything but miserable and afraid, and Sid knew it. We’d been friends too long.   
  
As I stepped closer, he opened his arms wide and welcomed me in.  
  
“Come home with me, Flower. You don’t have to be alone, you know,” he murmured into my ear. And damn, how tempting an offer that was. But part of me didn’t want to be distracted with food and videogames and TV shows. That part of me wanted to feel the loss of Ty, wanted to feel the longing for his return, and most of all – the hope that it would all work out.  
  
“I’m OK,” I finally told him, when I could speak.  
  
“You’re such a liar. And a bad liar to boot.”  
  
Tears began to stream down my face, but I was resolute. “I’m going home,” I said, ending the embrace and walking toward my car. Before I opened my door, I turned to him to say goodbye, only to see that his eyes were as sad and swollen as mine.  
  
“Call me…” His anxious voice broke like a hormonal teenager’s; he swiped a sleeve across his eyes. “If you hear anything, if you need anything. OK? Please?”  
  
I nodded and drove home. Alone.  
  
  
  
  
I must admit, I was afraid. Afraid of the decision the judge would make, afraid of the impact a reversal would have on my life, afraid I wouldn’t see Marc again. On top of that, for the first time in my life, I was somewhat afraid to fly.  
  
Not that I thought something would happen to the plane, mind you. Since I’d been enslaved, I hadn’t traveled alone – mainly because I couldn’t. There were all these restrictions and rules, even when I was with Marc.  
  
But now, flying alone meant being monitored by the Air Marshal on board the flight. He (or she) would escort me to my seat at boarding and keep tabs on me throughout, as I had no master to keep me under control.  
  
Of course, “keeping tabs on me” was made much easier by what the Marshal would be holding during the flight – my paralyzer device. Any time he wanted to, he could hit that button and I’d be unable to move or speak.  
  
But as it happened, I had nothing to fear from Rob. I must admit, I didn’t expect to see a giant of a man approach us at the gate. Dark-skinned and tall, he looked like he could play pro football without wearing pads. When Marc turned me over into his custody and handed him all the required forms, we were both surprised when he shook his head in disbelief.  
  
“Shitty thing to do to a man,” he said. “I mean, I get that the money was good, but…” He stopped talking and his eyes dropped in embarrassment. “Sorry. Sometimes I start talking before I start thinking. No offense intended, sir.”  
  
“Ty.” I extended my hand, shook his in greeting. “And none taken.”  
  
He introduced himself, read over all the paperwork Marc had given him and pulled a tiny black box out of his pants pocket. It was identical to the paralyzer that Marc kept in his bedside table.  
  
“How’d he get that?” I whispered to Marc, flinching at the memory of its use.  
  
“We’re issued them now,” he stage-whispered back to me and smiled. “I wouldn’t carry it, though, if it weren’t against regs not to. I think they’re disgusting.”  
  
“You have no idea,” I said under my breath.  
  
He took the forms and the device to a counter a few steps away, leaving Marc and I to say our goodbyes.  
  
“I hate this, Ty. This not-knowing. I wish I could be going with you…”  
  
He’d already used up his personal days and then some, first with the auction and then my abduction. Any more requested free time would come at a cost neither of us was willing to pay. I couldn’t leave him with all this tension between us, however. And since I couldn’t grab him and kiss him like we lacked any audience, I put both my hands on his shoulders and asked him, “Smile for me? Please?” What he brought to light was fake and forced, but better than the anxious frown he’d worn for the last few hours.  
  
Rob returned, messenger bag in hand. “All set?” he asked. At my nod he reached out and shook Marc’s hand. “I’ll take good care of him, don’t worry.”  
  
  
  
  
I’d watched him tuck his mobile phone into the pocket of his pants before we’d left the house all those days ago. I’d watched him charge the thing at night, before we went to bed. So I knew he had it on him, now that we were miles apart – but do you think I tried to call him?  
  
Never tried. Picked up my phone hundreds of times, got as far as scrolling to his name in my contacts. But couldn’t do it. I mean, what would I say? _How are you doing? I love you? I miss you?_  
  
Not like I was going to lie back in my recliner and talk about that morning’s practice, as if he were right there in the room with me. Not like I’d feel better listening to him speak to me, either. I’d just be back to being miserable and lonely without him here.  
  
Sid tried again that morning, telling me he’d bought more food than he’d intended to, and would I stop by after practice for lunch? This time, I gave in.  
  
Didn’t say much on the way to his place. And rather than keep up a steady stream of chatter, Sid stayed quiet as well.  
  
“Want a grilled chicken breast?” he asked as soon as we got inside.  
  
“Anything’s fine, Sid.”  
  
He opened his refrigerator. “Hey, I’ve got some of Nathalie’s pasta. She sends it over at least twice a week.”  
  
“That’s cool,” I said absently. I guess I wasn’t paying too close attention to what Sid was saying as he pulled things out of the fridge, because I could have sworn I heard the words “bottle of beer.”  
  
“What?”  
  
He grinned and folded his arms across his chest. “You weren’t listening to a word I said.”  
  
“And somehow, you think _c’est très amusant_ ,” I shot back, irritated that he seemed to be making some kind of joke at my expense.  
  
He had the grace to look ashamed, even with that ever-present twinkle in his eye. “You know, buddy, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He paused a moment and then asked, “Why don’t you call him?”  
  
A million reasons, I thought. He might be in some kind of meeting, planning out legal strategy or something like that. Or he might be taking a nap to try and forget all this… I glanced at my watch, noticed it was early afternoon. In just a few short hours, he could be listening to a judge ruling that he was free. And then it would be off to lunch to celebrate the decision, he and Greg toasting to an end to the nightmare.  
  
I wanted to be sick. Thank God, Sid saw the warning signs and steered me to the closest bathroom, led me to the sofa when I was done.  
  
“Guess it’s my turn to be sorry—” I started to say, when Sid held up a hand and sat down next to me.  
  
“No. I don’t want to hear it. I’m gonna go heat up some soup for you and then we’ll go take a nap.”  
  
“Umm, we?”  
  
He giggled, that bubbly sound that always brought a smile to my face, no matter how low I felt. “No, silly! It’s a big house, there’s other bedrooms besides mine. You could even use my recliner, if you’d rather…”  
  
I nodded. I ate the soup. Managed to keep it down. Stretched out on one of Sid’s guest room beds, stared up at the ceiling for a couple hours.  
  
Thank God I wasn’t starting that night…  
  
  
  
  
I must have checked my phone a hundred times, expecting a text, a missed call, a voice mail. I had no news, so calling him would have been foolish. All it would have gotten me was the chance to exchange the same tired phrases used when talking to seldom-heard-from distant relatives. _How are you? Just fine, thanks, and you? What’s new? Nothing much, there was a moose in the backyard yesterday…_  
  
OK, so maybe the last bit is just my family.  
  
Still, I assumed that by now, he was finished practicing and getting home, so he’d have no reason not to drop a quick ‘thinking of you’ text. I pulled out my phone, slid it open, but there was nothing but a black background screen and the time of day.  
  
“Can’t figure out what to say?” Greg asked around bites of his salad.  
  
“Am I that transparent?”  
  
Truth was, Greg had been a real blessing that day. On paper, his position seemed a bit contradictory: he was my owner’s agent, but he was supporting me in my efforts to win back my freedom. Wouldn’t have made sense to anyone who didn’t know us.  
  
He put down his fork and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “Ty, I know you’re nervous.” He stopped talking for a moment and cocked his head sideways. “Damn, that was a stupid thing to say.”  
  
I reached across the table and patted his hand. “Hey, I know your heart’s in the right place. You’re just trying to make me feel better.”  
  
“So be a pal and tell me that you do, OK?”  
  
We wrapped up lunch and headed to the courthouse. I had been a bit concerned that it might be a media circus, but we saw no reporters hanging around outside, nor did we see even one TV news van. “Are we early?” I asked Greg.  
  
“No, the attorney told me to have you here by 2:30, if you were going to be here.”  
  
“You know, I don’t get it,” I told him as we walked into the building. “Why would anyone question my wanting to be here?”  
  
“A few reasons,” he said, sliding a hand into his suit coat pocket for his ID. I followed suit and pulled my travel pass. “The judge isn’t going to take testimony from you, for one thing.”  
  
“But I was the victim! I’m the one whose life was wrecked by this pair of… of…” I searched vainly for a word I could use to describe them that wouldn’t get me bleeped on TV.  
  
We stepped to the metal detector and showed the guard our IDs. He checked his clipboard and waved us on through, adding, “Judge’s chambers are on the third floor, gentlemen.”  
  
As we walked to the elevator, I asked Greg, “His chambers? Why are we meeting there?”  
  
“Because this isn’t a formal hearing.” I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he quickly added, “I mean, yes, it’s formal in the sense that it’s a real hearing in front of a judge, and there will be a ruling, that kind of thing. But it’s not going to take place in front of a jury, and the only one testifying will be Jim O’Hara.”  
  
And that’s the biggest reason I’m here, I wanted to say. I want to face that asshole and listen to him answer questions about what made him toss my life in the shitter. “But wait – why isn’t Corinne testifying? Isn’t her kidnapping me what made the judge want to reopen the case in the first place?”  
  
We emerged from the elevator and were mere steps away from Judge Anderson’s chamber door when Greg answered, “She already has. The judge went to her rather than allowing her to come here.” He sneered a bit. “Said he knew what she’d say, that she’d throw all the blame on her husband and whine that she was just a pawn in his plans.”  
  
“And he doesn’t believe her?”  
  
He shook his head. “But that doesn’t matter. She said what she said to him there, and he has the transcripts from her interrogation by the feds after your abduction. Jim doesn’t have access to any of that.”  
  
“So he can’t lie and use her words against her to shift all his blame.”  
  
“Well, he can still lie,” he muttered. “But I think that a judge is used to hearing people lie.”  
  
  
  
  
I didn’t need an alarm to wake me. As I lay on the comfortable bed, I watched the hands on my wristwatch. When the long hand touched the twelve, at exactly four o’clock, I imagined that I was there beside him.  
  
 _Beneath the table, I brushed his hand, a mere supportive gesture. He turned to me and flicked that lopsided grin back, as much a part of him as my toothy smile was of me. The legal proceedings went on, but they were a mere blur, a buzzing in the background of him and me.  
  
We sat side by side as the judge and the lawyers dug out the facts of the case, displaying the truth for all to see. But try as I might to remember them, the words that the judge spoke were like smoke on water, there and then gone.  
  
He addressed Jim O’Hara, but in nonsense syllables rather than English. O’Hara answered him back, in as much gibberish, but with desperate tones and gestures. Didn’t matter. The judge shook his head and pounded his gavel, his mind seemingly made up.  
  
Suddenly, two uniformed bailiffs appeared behind us and ordered Ty to stand. As he did, the shiny collar around his neck began to disappear.  
  
The judge spoke clearly now, ordering that Ty be freed immediately, his life restored. Ty jumped for joy, turning to Greg and embracing him. I rose to my feet and opened my arms, welcoming Ty inside—  
  
Two other bailiffs pulled me back by the shoulders, wagging their heads. Not yours anymore, they said in monotone. Not yours…_  
  
I sat up in bed, gasping and trembling. I’d been dreaming.  
  
But which was the true nightmare?  
  
  
  
  
Well within my rights.  
  
If I heard that phrase once that day, I heard it a hundred times.  
  
 _Well within my rights_ , he kept saying, as if everything a person does is justified as long as one has the right to do it.  
  
Now at least I understood why everyone had told me not to bother to come. I was about as useful in that room as training wheels on a motorcycle. But of all those assembled and seated at that long conference table, Judge Anderson seemed least surprised to see me. I got the impression he approved of my desire to attend, so long as I minded my p’s and q’s.  
  
The last to arrive, as expected, was Jim O’Hara. He and his attorney got there with only five minutes to spare, leaving me wondering if the judge would have ruled in my favor had O’Hara not showed.  
  
“Nice of you to make it, Mr. O’Hara,” the judge remarked.  
  
“Sorry, Your Honor.” He gave no excuse – polite, flimsy or otherwise. Just took his seat and faced the judge. Never even looked at me.  
  
At precisely three o’clock, the court stenographer who was seated off to the side placed her hands on the keyboard and looked expectantly at the judge, who spoke formally to open the proceedings. “As we all know, the court has decided to reopen the application for the sale of the slave currently owned by Marc-André Fleury, represented here by his agent Gregory Penrose. In the interests of clarity, Slave Fleury will be referred to by his former name, Ty Conklin…”  
  
It was as if I wasn’t even there. My mind began to wander. Would I be returning to Pittsburgh, my status unchanged, my life truly forever altered? Or would my old life here be waiting for me? The house I’d owned, all my possessions returned to me?  
  
But in the midst of my wandering, those words kept popping up.  
  
“Your Honor, I was well within my rights to make that decision,” he said to one of the judge’s questions. No desperate tone in his voice, he spoke as if narrating a story. My story.  
  
“Did you have a conversation with your wife about putting Mr. Conklin on the open market?”  
  
“Objection,” interrupted O’Hara’s attorney. “Conversation between husband and wife is privileged.”  
  
The judge smirked, as if he’d hoped to get one over on an unsuspecting witness. “Good thing Mr. O’Hara has you on his side, Jerry,” he said.  
  
“Gotta earn that retainer somehow, Judge.”  
  
And on and on it went – Judge Anderson asking questions about the events leading up to my sale, and O’Hara deflecting most of them by insisting he had the right. This was going nowhere. I had wasted my time in coming.  
  
But then the judge turned his questions to the day I was sold. Why that day? Why no promotion?  
  
Same song and dance, until a document was produced showing the prices of all the players who had been sold as slaves. The amount Marc had paid for me, while quite the sum of money, was dwarfed by the amounts of the others. All of the others.  
  
There had been eleven players sold before me. In my sale, O’Hara had fetched a tenth of the price of the next-cheapest player on that list.  
  
“It is what it is, Your Honor,” he said, not bothering to dispute the facts right there in black and white.  
  
“And you don’t think I should find this suspicious, that you threw away millions of dollars, merely to expedite the proceedings? When it would have cost you nothing to wait a few days or even a week?”  
  
The asshole didn’t even try to respond. Just shrugged his shoulders in apparent disdain. Finally he said, “I don’t know what to tell you, Judge. I guess I saw things in reverse.”  
  
“Explain.”  
  
His voice just on the edge of insolence, he replied, “It was a distasteful thing I had to do. I put getting it done quickly ahead of potential profit.”  
  
Distasteful? Something he had to do?  
  
I wanted to scream. I wanted to get up and throw the chair I was sitting on across the room. I wanted very badly to reach across the table and yank O’Hara out of that apparent serenity by slamming his head down, then pounding it into a bloody pulp. But in the midst of those desires, I felt Greg’s hand clasp mine under the table, willing my inaction and silence.  
  
He also began writing something on the legal pad in front of him. When he finished, he slid the pad toward me.  
  
 _Keep it together, buddy. It’s almost over._  
  
I nodded; what else could I do? After all, he was right – this would all be over soon.   
  
One way or the other.  
  
  
  
  
  
I wiped my mouth with a scrap of toilet paper.  
  
 _This is pissing me off_ , I thought in rather vivid Quebecois French. I didn’t know whether I preferred being awake and miserable, or dreaming and terrified. Frankly, neither prospect was more attractive than the other.  
  
I knew Sid was waiting on the other side of the door. I knew when I opened it, I’d find him holding a glass of ginger ale, as he had been twice before. But this time, I couldn’t look him in the eye.  
  
“Should I call someone?” he asked gently, soothingly.  
  
I knew what he meant. He wanted to know if Coach had to be notified that I couldn’t go tonight. “I’m on the bench, Sid.”  
  
“No guarantees there, buddy. You could be off that bench in the first ten minutes.”  
  
Surprisingly, that thought appealed to me, cleared my head, settled my unruly stomach a bit. On the bench, I could watch the game while my head imagined all sorts of awful outcomes. As I had been doing since I’d woken from that terrible dream.  
  
But on the ice… I could mentally stash everything in my life in that shelf above my stall in the dressing room, leave it safely behind the imaginary door, and skate to my crease a blank slate. It’s how I work; I had perfected the practice in the years since—  
  
Since Ty had taught it to me. _Oh, shit, glad I hadn’t moved far from the bathroom door…_  
  
  
  
  
“I think I’ve heard enough, gentlemen,” said Judge Anderson with an upraised hand. “I’m ready to rule.”  
  
My heart began to race. This was the moment. Either the judge believed O’Hara had conspired with his wife to sell me privately to her, or he didn’t. Looking at his face, I couldn’t get a feel for what he was about to say. He betrayed no emotion whatsoever.  
  
“I’ve heard enough testimony between your wife and yourself, Mr. O’Hara, which makes me feel satisfied about re-opening this case. A man’s future is at stake here; I doubt that I could have slept right, knowing I had the power to make sure all had been done in accordance with the law.”  
  
 _It wasn’t_ , I wanted to shout. _Surely you can see that!_  
  
“Mrs. O’Hara’s testimony of two days ago only served to confuse me. I expected her to admit everything, while implicating you as the ringleader. But she didn’t.”  
  
My head shot up. _What?_  
  
“At first, she tried to get me to believe that she only discovered your plans to hold the auction when she heard it on the radio the day of the sale. That you had never mentioned it to her, and that she had to scramble to arrange financing.”  
  
Shit. That actually made sense. After all, Marc had managed to outbid her for me, at a fraction of my value, if the previous auction prices were to be believed.  
  
“Frankly, though, I did not believe her, and I let her know that I did not believe her. She hired Agent Wood to abduct Mr. Conklin, and proof of that crime is rather watertight. I assumed that she would pass the buck back to you, Mr. O’Hara, but again, she refused to do so.”  
  
All this talk, and I was no closer to understanding the judge’s position. If, as he said, he didn’t believe Corinne when she said they hadn’t cooked up this plan between them, he could still believe Jim’s insistence that he had every right to sell me. The sale would stand and I would remain a slave.  
  
The only way I could come out of this with my freedom was if the judge disbelieved both of them. He had to rule that there had been conspiracy. Or so I thought.  
  
“Ms. O’Hara did let me know that a mutual friend of yours was the one who gave her Agent Wood’s contact info,” the judge said, watching carefully the eyes of the powerful man sitting across the table. “I wanted to talk to this person myself, but it seems she’s moved and left no forwarding address.”  
  
O’Hara shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, Judge.”  
  
“Didn’t think you would, Mr. O’Hara. But between your wife’s statements and the reports I’ve gotten from the FBI, things have a funny way of pointing back to you.” The judge shifted in his chair and leaned forward. “Mr. O’Hara, I don’t know what you thought to accomplish with this action. I don’t know enough about the management side of running a hockey team to understand the move.”  
  
“Your Honor, I was within—”  
  
“Yes, Mr. O’Hara, we’ve all heard the refrain. Sadly, that seems to be the only leg in your legal argument – and a table needs more than one leg to stand.”  
  
He didn’t believe him! I watched O’Hara’s face slacken and pale, watched that asshole squirm as he likely imagined losing the money he’d gotten for selling me. Oddly, though, I also felt Greg stiffen next to me and heard his breath catch.  
  
“There are just too many unanswered questions for me to be comfortable with the way things happened. I’d much rather make sure things were done right from the beginning, and since I can’t, this is the next-best step…”  
  
My heart felt like it had just stopped beating. _He’s overturning the ruling… I’m free, I’m free, I’m free…_  
  
Suddenly Greg shot out of his chair and to his feet. “Your Honor!”  
  
All eyes in that room turned to our side of the table, including those belonging to Judge Anderson. “Mr. Penrose, although this is not a courtroom, rules of proper decorum still stand.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. It’s just that… I mean, you were about to rule…”  
  
“Yes, I was. Before you so rudely interrupted.”  
  
I grabbed the sleeve of Greg’s suit coat and yanked him closer. “What the fuck are you doing?” I hissed at him.  
  
He completely ignored me. “Please, Your Honor, I just need five minutes to speak to my client.”  
  
What in the world could he need to talk about now? I was about to be freed and he wanted to have a little chat? My hands balled into fists under the table, and I gladly would have used them to show Greg how I felt about his little stunt.  
  
The judge’s gaze narrowed. “If I remember correctly, your client is Mr. Fleury, and he is not present today. I gather you wish to slip out and make a phone call?”  
  
“Please, Judge, five minutes?”  
  
“I’m sorry, Mr. Penrose, I don’t have five minutes to give you. I was due in court five minutes ago. We either wrap this up right now or I’ll have to recess and fit you all in tomorrow.”  
  
“Recess!” Greg spat out. “Thank you, Your Honor!”  
  
“Hold on there a minute,” the judge said. “If no one has an objection to re-convening tomorrow at…” He checked his schedule. “Eleven a.m.?”  
  
I looked over at the other side of the table. Jim O’Hara was smiling. His attorney folded his hands in front of him and said, “No objection, Judge.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Flower, you can’t go out there.”  
  
I opened my mouth to tell Sid what I thought of his opinion, but was held off by Coach Dan’s upraised hand.  
  
“I didn’t realize that the ‘C’ on that sweater stood for ‘coach,’ Sidney.”  
  
I smiled behind my mask. Dan never addressed him as ‘Sidney’ unless he wanted his full attention and was correcting him in some way. Sid had overstepped his bounds, and the sheepish expression on his face confirmed that he knew that.  
  
“Sorry, Coach. Won’t happen again.”  
  
“Bullshit,” he responded with a sly grin. “But don’t worry – next time it does, I’ll just make you Mustache Boy that month.” He patted Sid on the back and added, “Don’t think I can’t. I’ve done it before.”  
  
Just as Sid had said at lunchtime, there were no guarantees that I wouldn’t be playing ten minutes in. It was as if he’d predicted it. Johnny had given no hint that he wasn’t completely on his game – he’d looked fine at practice and during warmup – so his meltdown was rather unexpected.  
  
It also didn’t help that the rest of the team seemingly forgot how to play in front of him. First goal happened when two guys left the puck in no-man’s-land outside the trapezoid, each one thinking the other had it. Second was less than a minute later, when no one stopped the cross- ice pass in our own zone.  
  
Couldn’t completely blame the third on anyone but Johnny, but by then the Flyers had begun to pepper him with shots, hoping to cash in on a goalie’s Bad Day. One of them was bound to get through.  
  
Some of the fourth goal could go on my shoulders, though. Coach Dan knew about Ty’s case, knew how distracted I’d been all day, knew damn well he wasn’t starting me. He honestly didn’t want to play me at all, so he left Johnny in for one last goal against.  
  
At the end of one, it was 4-0 Flyers. And Johnny and I had each seen ten shots by the period’s end, with all of mine staying on the right side of the goal line.  
  
Back in the dressing room in the first intermission, though, the team sounded anything but defeated. Calls of “Gotta step it up boys,” and “Let’s get focused, now,” echoed around the igloo-shaped room. Occasionally, I’d see someone pat Johnny on the head as he sat at his stall and vow to “get ‘em back.”  
  
If anything, it made me more focused, more driven to force defeat back onto the shoulders of the guys in the other room – not that I ever needed much incentive to beat the Flyers.  
  
  
  
  
  
I didn’t say a word in the cab ride to the hotel. Not one word in the lobby, or in the elevator, or even for five whole minutes once we got to our room. I didn’t trust myself to keep to words once I got rolling. I was afraid that the pent-up aggression of the day would explode and I’d end up throwing a punch. Or two. Or a dozen.  
  
Greg tried to start the conversation, but only got as far as “Ty, I know you’re pissed…”  
  
I held up a hand to stop him, to stop my rage from erupting, to just stop. When I got both my mouth and my mind under control, and forced my fists to unclench and relax, I spoke.  
  
“I don’t even want to know why.”  
  
Before he could say anything, though, I put my hand up again.  
  
“I don’t want some long lawyer-type speech, Greg. Judge Anderson was prepared to free me and you stopped him.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
I closed my eyes and saw red. I don’t know how I kept from killing him.  
  
“I don’t get it. I thought that you were my friend.”  
  
“I can’t believe you just said that—”  
  
I grabbed his lapel, yanked his face to within inches of mine. “You can’t believe it? This is my life we’re talking about! It’s not a contract negotiation!”  
  
“Please, Ty! Let me explain.”  
  
“Fuck your explanation, Greg!”   
  
I shoved him away from me. I didn’t want a bunch of empty words, didn’t want guesses or pats on the head or declarations that it would all work out in the end. I wanted my freedom.  
  
His posture, which had been curled over in apprehension, straightened a bit at my outburst. “Ty,’ he said softly, “you owe me.” His right hand slipped beneath his suit coat and tapped the spot where a month before, a sniper’s bullet had pierced his left shoulder blade.  
  
I closed my eyes as the memory of that day flooded my mind. It had been a terrible experience for me, being arrested and held and collared and chained, and finally being sold – but the worst part was watching Greg fall on that tarmac and seeing that pool of blood spread beneath him.  
  
I had lost my freedom that day, but Greg had nearly lost his life.  
  
“You’re right. I owe you.”  
  
He let out a breath of relief, turned around and pulled out the desk chair beside him, rolled it closer to a nearby armchair. “Come here, sit down, and let me tell you what I’m afraid of.”  
  
His choice of words stunned me enough to do as he asked.  
  
Greg spoke softly. “O’Hara’s too clean.”  
  
“But Corinne—”  
  
“Let me finish. The judge, for all his questions and accusations, can’t get anything to stick to Jim. He’s Teflon.”  
  
I waited a second, realized that Greg was allowing me to respond. “So if he can’t pin anything on O’Hara, why did it look like he was getting ready to free me?”  
  
“Because too much doesn’t add up. Too much has happened to let the judge think that there weren’t shenanigans involved.” I smiled at the somewhat less-than-legal term. “Ty, you don’t seem to realize this: you weren’t free a month ago. The day before those officers came to take you? You weren’t a free man. Hell, the man who owns you isn’t a completely free man.”  
  
“He’s a helluva sight freer than I am!” I shouted. However, his words had started to sink in, to make sense, and my thoughts began to follow where he was leading. “He’s under contract.”  
  
Greg nodded. “And it isn’t one he can just tear up and walk away from. He’s bound to its terms. As you were bound to the terms of the deal you signed. With Jim O’Hara.”  
  
I shivered as the realization hit me. “If the judge can’t pin anything on him, and he sets me free… Oh, _shit…_ ”  
  
“You go right back to being under contract to the Blues. Just as if this last month never happened.”  
  
“And O’Hara…?”  
  
“Could put you up for auction the moment the judge’s gavel falls.”  
  
I jumped to my feet, began to pace. “No, no way! The bad PR alone… He wouldn’t!”  
  
Greg stood as well and stepped in front of me. “He would, and not only that, Ty, he will. He’s lost too much face over this mess. May not be tomorrow or this week, but in time, he will sell you. And this time, he’ll do it right.”  
  
He didn’t have to elaborate. Marc had barely managed to get hold of enough money to win the crooked auction, the one where my value was kept artificially low. He’d never be able to outbid billionaires.  
  
I felt my world crashing down, felt like a condemned man on the way to the gallows, watching that noose swing in the wind, and knowing I’d be swinging soon. “So what good did the recess do? Tomorrow morning, the judge will rule and it’ll be over.”  
  
Greg shook his head and smiled. “There’s a fine point in the law about negotiating a deal in good faith.”  
  
“Which O’Hara didn’t—”  
  
“But Marc did. If he claims that he doesn’t want to lose what he bargained and paid for, in good faith, the judge could allow the sale to stand, even if he decides that Jim should not have been granted the right to sell.”  
  
“What?” I couldn’t imagine Marc ever admitting that, if doing so would bar my freedom. “He’ll never go along with it.”  
  
“He doesn’t have to. Remember, I am his agent. I have the legal right to make the claim for him.”  
  
Another cold wave washed over me. “You… you would stand up in court and… oppose my freedom?”  
  
Greg wouldn’t meet my gaze. He paced a few steps away and muttered his next words to the wall. “No, Ty. We will.”  
  
“We? You mean you and Marc?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying.  
  
He sighed, obviously wishing he didn’t have to continue. “No, ‘we’ as in you and me. See, I doubt Marc’s claim on its own would sway the judge to let his earlier ruling stand. He sounded like he had his mind made up. It’s going to take one more thing to push him in that direction.”  
  
When he looked back over at me, I had an idea where he was going, which direction his thoughts were heading.  
  
“Your request that the judge allow O’Hara’s petition to stand might just do it.”  
  
I stepped over to the window, looked out over the city below. I had come full circle in a matter of minutes – from wishing desperately for my freedom, to hoping that the judge would allow me to remain enslaved. And knowing that my own words could determine which fork in the road I’d follow.  
  
A disturbing thought hit me, though: if we walked into Judge Anderson’s chambers the next day arguing that we wanted to leave things the way they were, Jim O’Hara and his hired shark would wonder what smelled suspiciously rotten. They might realize that losing their fight would actually be re-gaining a valuable asset -- and throw up all sorts of legal objections.  
  
I turned back to Greg. “Do you think that the judge would agree to give us five minutes to make our request, before the official hearing?” I asked. “Alone?”  
  
Greg frowned and said, “Judges don’t like backdoor dealing. They tend to get a little suspicious when one side of a dispute wants to talk without the other side present.” But he raised his eyes and stroked his chin as he thought. “Nothing says we can’t be sitting outside his chambers tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m., though.”  
  
  
  
  
I stood on my head. I saw the puck like it was a beach ball. I was in the zone, had the game of my life, the game of my career.  
  
Yep, I heard each one of those clichés afterward, as the media surrounded my dressing room stall. If we’d been in Canada, I’m sure there would have been a few more often-heard French phrases tossed in as well.  
  
I’d never played as well as I had in those two and a half periods. It was as if I had someone in my head, whispering the type of shot, its velocity, possible obstacles that could change its direction – a tiny goalie angel on my shoulder, so to speak.  
  
Honestly, I never wanted that game to end. It brought back memories of peewee hockey back home, when I knew that I was the best player out there, and no one had a shot at beating me. And just for those few moments, I forgot every problem in my life, losing myself completely in the bliss, the childlike joy of playing. I was still riding that high after press and teammates alike left the dressing room, when I heard the sound I’d been waiting for.  
  
 _“Don’t stop… believin’…”_  
  
I grabbed the phone, almost dropped it in my haste. “Ty!”  
  
“Great game tonight,” he said, which shocked the hell out of me. Had he been watching? From where?  
  
After a moment to collect my thoughts, I calmed down enough to ask, “You saw the highlights?”  
  
“I saw the game, Flower. You were… fantastic. I’ve never seen you play better.”  
  
I should have known he was watching, the way he’d watched me in all the practices on the last roadtrip. It was like having another coach, actually. Over dinner, he’d give me little corrections and advice like he used to do, back when he was my backup. And at odd times during games, I’d hear his voice in my head—  
  
 _Mon gardien ange…_ It was his voice I’d heard that night.  
  
“It was you,” I said without thinking. “You were there, in my head.”  
  
I heard a breathy snicker. “Hell of an imagination you’ve got. Don’t sell yourself short; what you did out there tonight was all you. I had nothing to do with it.”  
  
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. Telling me that I could have played as well without you is like telling me I could have played as well without my pads, or my stick.” I wanted him to know how important he was to me, not just as a friend, or a lover, but as a professional. And then suddenly it hit me – was he a professional again? I wanted to ask, but the words came out in a tangle. “Ty, how did… I mean, the hearing, the judge…?”  
  
He interrupted with the sweet teasing words I expected. “English, babe.”  
  
Tears welled up and I sucked in a ragged breath. “I couldn’t make any more sense in French, Ty.”  
  
“I know, I was just… being silly. Too much tension, I guess.”  
  
He had too much tension? I was completely in the dark and he was holding the only light, seemingly unwilling to turn it on. “Ty, what are you not telling me?”  
  
“What you want to know, I can’t tell you.” Before I could ask him what he meant, he continued. “There’s been a delay. We have to be back in court tomorrow morning at eleven for the final decision.”  
  
I couldn’t believe it. In a way, I had braced myself for the news that he was free, that he wasn’t coming back. But now to find that the judge hadn’t even made up his mind yet? Perversely, it pissed me off.  
  
“What’s he waiting for? More evidence that Corinne O’Hara is dirty?”  
  
Almost too calmly, he stated, “Corinne didn’t sell me. Everything she did was after Jim auctioned me off.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So it might not be enough to invalidate the sale.”  
  
“Might?” For some reason, my brain had firmly wrapped itself around the concept of Ty’s enslavement being reversed. Hearing that there was a possibility he’d remain mine was like hitting a speed bump on a darkened road.  
  
“That should please you.”  
  
I couldn’t believe he’d said it. But even worse, I couldn’t believe he knew that it was the truth.  
  
“Marc? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”  
  
I almost brushed off his words as stress. I almost mouthed an ‘I understand’ to reassure him. But neither of those options were as appropriate as what I did say.  
  
“Ty, I love you. I miss you. I want you to come home to me.”  
  
“And if—”  
  
“No. There’s no ‘if.’ I’m just telling you how I feel. And that, I’ll never be sorry for.”  
  
  
  
  
Greg hadn’t been wrong. Initially, the judge hadn’t wanted to hear us without at least O’Hara’s lawyer present, but Greg pleaded that we just needed five minutes to clarify some legal point.  
  
Once we were seated at the judge’s desk, he said to Greg, “Your five minutes started thirty seconds ago. Let’s hear it.”  
  
Greg opened his mouth to respond, but I laid a hand on his arm. “Wait.” I turned to the judge and asked, “May I speak?”  
  
A smile twitched at the corners of the older man’s mouth. “As a matter of fact, your presence here is what convinced me to allow you the five minutes. So I think it’s wholly appropriate for you to do so.”  
  
“If… if you free me later this morning,” I began haltingly, nervously. “If you put me back the way things were a month ago…”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Won’t you be handing me right back to Jim O’Hara?”  
  
Judge Anderson leaned back in his leather desk chair and tapped his chin in contemplation. After considering my question, he straightened back up and said, “There isn’t any way around that, Mr. Conklin. You signed a contract of your own free will a year ago placing yourself in that position.”  
  
I understand that, but…”  
  
“No ‘buts’ about it. You knew the risks when you signed. One of those risks was loss of freedom.” His brows narrowed and his earlier smile was long gone. “Now, if that’s all you needed to know…”  
  
“No, Your Honor,” I blurted out. “I think you have me wrong. I don’t want out of the contract.”  
  
“Then why the objection to being returned to the Blues?”  
  
“Because O’Hara sold me. And if you give me back to him, he’ll sell me again.”  
  
The judge started to respond, but something made him stop – I hoped it was the logical side of his brain connecting the dots. After a moment, he said, “There is no way I can set you free that doesn’t place you under contract to the Blues, and by extension, to Mr. O’Hara.”  
  
“That’s what we – Greg and I – were afraid of. So we came up with a solution. A legal solution.”  
  
When we finished telling him about our legal gymnastics, I caught a glimpse of his face. He seemed legitimately surprised.  
  
“You do understand, Mr. Conklin, that if I grant you this request, you will be irrevocably bound? There is no avenue of appeal.” Without waiting for my reply, he dropped his head and muttered, “I never thought that it would go this far…”  
  
“Your Honor?”  
  
The judge met my gaze firmly. “The petition. When it crossed my desk a month ago, I… I didn’t want to sign it. I don’t believe in slavery, even in the dressed-up form it took when professional sports leagues adopted it.”  
  
“I don’t blame you, judge,” I said honestly. “You didn’t make me sign my deal; you didn’t put me up for auction.”  
  
“But with the stroke of my pen, I allowed the latter to come to pass.” An ironic grin flitted across his face. “And now you’re before me asking me to… to toss the key to your manacles down a bottomless pit.” He rose to his feet and extended his arm toward his chamber door. Greg and I took the hint.  
  
Before we left, I gave it one last shot. “Your Honor, if you let me remain enslaved… I just want you to know that you won’t be leaving me in chains.” I cleared my throat and added, “If you set me free, though, you will be.”


	10. Chapter 10

Once again, I was alone in bed and didn’t need an alarm clock. My brain was fully awake long before the sun rose. He’d still be asleep now, especially since it was an hour earlier where he was. _No problem. I can worry enough for the both of us…_  
  
I didn’t see much need to toss and turn and try to get back to sleep, so I rolled out of bed and headed downstairs. I wandered around the kitchen aimlessly, my stomach begging me to eat, but my head… I picked up an apple, put it down, opened my breadbox, shut it back up. He wasn’t eating, so neither was I.  
  
I glanced at the clock on the wall. Nearly six in the morning. _He’s in bed; why shouldn’t I be there too?_  
  
An hour later, as I sat on that chair in the dining room, the awful chair he’d been tied to, I wondered if he were untangling himself from the sheets and stumbling to the shower. I smiled then, imagining the twinkle in his sleep-dulled eyes. I sat there for about twenty minutes more, as he must have been shutting off the water and grabbing a towel.  
  
 _Now I can eat,_ I thought, as he’d be calling room service now. I snagged that same apple on my way to dropping a couple pieces of bread into the toaster. Of course, he was likely ordering a real breakfast, one with all those delicious high-fat and empty calorie-filled items he’d always tease me with. He’d laugh and tell me that this was one advantage to no longer playing pro sports – that now he could eat whatever he wanted.  
  
I grabbed the butter from the fridge and defied the echoed laugh as I spread it on my toast. _So there._  
  
As he got dressed, I headed for the shower, as if we were together here, sharing the bathroom. I ran the water as hot as I could stand, let it ease my tension, let the steam carry away my fear for awhile.  
  
After I’d toweled off, gotten dressed and made the bed, I picked up my phone from my bedside table. A little after eight. Still hours to go before he’d be sitting in court listening to that jerk judge finally make up his mind.  
  
What was to decide? In my mind, there was something off about the way Ty was so suddenly sold. Surely the judge would see that!  
  
That had to be what he was thinking right about now. He probably hadn’t put on his suit just to eat breakfast, so I figured that he was pulling it out of the closet now and checking it for wrinkles, steaming it out a little.  
  
He had some time now, maybe he’d take a walk to think. I headed outside to my backyard and stared up at the morning sky, which was quickly darkening to match the gray of Ty’s eyes. I felt the first drops of rain bare minutes later and I stood there, as the drops came faster and harder, stood there and took my second shower. I hoped he was staying dry.  
  
Up the stairs once more, to strip off my drenched clothing and get re-dressed. Once I had, I lay down on top of my down comforter and wondered where he was. On the roof? In the hotel lobby? Or maybe there was a park nearby, would he go there? Was it raining on him? Or snowing?   
  
Sunshine just seemed so wrong today.  
  
When I woke up again, it was twelve o’clock, right on the button.  
  
How long would it take? If Ty won his freedom, would he call me right away, or would he try to get as far away from the hell this month had become for him? How would we react when we did eventually see each other? Could he look me in the eye, after knowing how I’d found him in that dive motel? Could I meet him and make goalie small talk, after sharing my heart with him right here in this bed?  
  
 _Make the questions stop!_ I wanted to shout, but on and on they came… Would my life ever be the same without him here? If he were set free, would he leave me for good? Could I really accept that?  
  
I loved him enough to let him go, and too much to turn my back on what we had. I wanted him free, but I wanted him back, and I couldn’t reconcile the two.  
  
Finally, at around 11:30 St. Louis time, my tears fell like the rain on my window, and I grabbed the pillow he’d used and held it, cradled it, crushed it to me. One way or another, it was probably over, and he was either free or mine.  
  
And then, like a bolt of lightning, I realized that was what I truly wanted: Ty free to be mine. Not either/or. Both.  
  
I didn’t even bother to wipe my face before rolling off the bed and heading back downstairs, my phone clutched tightly in my hand. What did it matter? Who was going to see me like this anyway?  
  
As my foot hit the first stair, I could have sworn I heard a car door closing, but figured it was my next-door neighbor pulling in. But when I reached the bottom of the staircase, I heard footsteps on my front porch, the jingle of keys, the click of those keys in the lock, the welcoming creak of the opening door—  
  
Ty.  
  
I wanted to shout his name and fling myself into his arms, but my feet were rooted to the floor and my lungs were frozen between inhale and exhale. And still the questions came: Was he real? Was I still asleep and dreaming? How could he be in two places at once?  
  
“Marc.”  
  
His soft whispered voice caressed my name as he took a few steps toward me, dropping his suitcase behind him. My mouth opened and closed, vainly trying to respond.  
  
His hand rose up toward my cheek, and I leaned into it, eagerly. If this was a dream, I was going to make the best of it. When he pulled it away after a minute, it was warm and wet.  
  
“Oh, God, Ty… How…?”  
  
“Long story, babe,” he answered. He began to unwind his wool scarf and unbutton his coat when I saw the flash of steel at his throat.  
  
“Ty, the collar? You… you lost?”  
  
His hands shot up to his neck, as if he’d forgotten that the hated symbol of his enslavement was still there. I watched his eyes close a moment, then blink back to me.  
  
“I guess I did. I mean, that is what most people would think.”  
  
I didn’t understand and I told him so. “You guess you lost?”  
  
He dropped both scarf and coat to the floor. Before I knew it, he was taking my hand and tugging me into the living room, pulling me down beside him on the sofa, locking his gaze with mine.  
  
“I didn’t exactly lose. On the advice of a good friend… I surrendered.”  
  
“What? Who—?” I asked, only to be silenced by his rather insistent kiss. Hours ago, I would have given everything I possessed to have him here like this, doing just what he was doing with me, but my evil questioning mind triggered the memory of my last words to him on the phone the night before: _Ty, I love you. I miss you. I want you to come home to me._  
  
Had those words influenced him to give up? Had I betrayed him by revealing my heart’s desire?  
  
I’d been in this position once before, the night I’d hoisted the Cup in Detroit. Overjoyed in victory, I’d shaken his hand and clasped his shoulder and briefly registered the pain in his eyes before making my way down the line. Sure, I’d felt a stab of regret at helping to cause some of that pain, but I’d won.   
  
My dream had come true, at the expense of his.  
  
And now, once again, I was getting what I wanted most, while he was being denied. This time, though, there were no comforting assurances of “Some day…” Greg had told me before they’d left that there was no appeal. Decision final.  
  
NO!  
  
I pulled back and cradled his face in my hands. “It’s not too late, it can’t be too late!” I ranted, making little sense even to myself. “Tell them you thought it over and changed your mind. They can’t just give you the one chance! There’s got to be a way you can be free!”  
  
“Marc,” he murmured, “it’s done. I made my decision—”  
  
“But it’s not fair!”  
  
“You aren’t listening to me.” He spoke calmly, never raising his voice. “I made this choice. I chose to be with you.”  
  
“You were sold to me!”  
  
“And I had the chance to be released from you.” He glanced away, raising his eyes as if remembering something. “In fact, I was seconds away from being a free man, if you want to call it that.”  
  
But why—?”  
  
“Shhh.” He laid two fingers across my lips. “That good friend I told you about? He stopped the judge from setting me free,” he said, snickering. “You know, that agent of yours is one smart cookie.”  
  
He told me everything Greg had said, both in court and later at the hotel. It was well thought-out, logical, and it all made sense, except for the part about O’Hara reselling him.  
  
“But he wouldn’t!” I insisted. “The league would stop him, or the union!”  
  
Ty shook his head. “Remember when we thought that about the slavery clause in the CBA? That the courts would stop the owners from actually auctioning us off?” He scowled slightly in remembrance. “We put our faith in the courts, the league and the union – and sold ourselves. Long before the first real auction.”  
  
  
  
  
  
He didn’t understand, and I couldn’t make him understand. No matter what I said. Oh, he’d nod his head and agree with what I was saying, but he wasn’t adding two and two and getting four.  
  
I needed him to understand why I chose to remain enslaved. Not because I believed that one day, the courts would overturn this. Not because I feared being sold again, although that did play a big part in my decision.  
  
No, I knew what I had done. But unlike everything else that had happened to me over the last month, my choice to remain Marc’s property was mine. _Mine._ And once made, no one could take that decision out of my hands.   
  
In a perverse way, I felt almost empowered. I remembered the conversation I’d had with Judge Anderson, as Greg and I stood in the doorway to his chambers earlier that morning.  
  
 _“Mr. Conklin, I am sorry that your life has taken such a dramatic turn. I only wish I could have foreseen the events…”  
  
“No one could,” I interrupted. “I’m just glad you agreed to hear me out.”  
  
The judge shot a hand through his graying hair. “Are you sure about this? I haven’t made a final ruling yet. It’s not too late.”  
  
“I’m sure. The risk is too great. A month ago, I lost everything, everything I had and everything I was, only to have a hand reach out and pull me to safety. Not just once, but twice in that month, he’s been the one to save me. I can’t risk losing him again.”  
  
He sighed and reached for a pen, slid a document closer to himself. When he looked up at me again, his head cocked sideways and he smiled. “You know, you look different than you did yesterday. Hell, you look different than you did when you walked in a few minutes ago.”  
  
“How so, Your Honor?”  
  
“Yesterday, you looked almost beaten down. Tired.” He rolled his shoulders forward in illustration. “You looked like a slave.”  
  
I wanted to argue that a three-games-in-four-nights NHL roadtrip will do exactly the same thing to you, but wisely reconsidered. “And now?”  
  
“You’re standing straight. Shoulders back. Making eye contact.” He got up from his desk and crossed the room, his hand extended to shake mine. “Thank you.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“Making this decision an easy one.”_  
  
  
  
  
  
I still didn’t get it, and he just sat placidly next to me. “After all you went through, Ty – and all you worked for – you just gave up?” To me, it was like getting to Game Seven in the playoffs and deciding that it was too hard, so why not let in four or five goals and go home?  
  
“Depends on what you think I ‘gave up.’”  
  
“Your freedom!” I blurted.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
He said that like I had asked him if he were hungry or wanted to watch a movie. Just flatly admitted he’d given up his dream. “Why?” I finally asked him.  
  
“I thought it would have been obvious, Marc.” All of a sudden, his eyes widened, as if a new thought had occurred to him. “We all make deals to get what we want. I mean, look at you. You sacrificed your relationship with your father when you bought me.”  
  
That had been the most painful part of the last month for me, the possibility of losing my dad’s love and respect. But even that had worked out, and I couldn’t let Ty think that my potential loss was in any way comparable to his permanent one.  
  
“No, Ty,” I said, raising a hand. “He doesn’t feel that way anymore. My sister explained what would have happened to you if I hadn’t bought you. He… he called me, when I was at the hospital, waiting to see if you’d be OK.” I shivered a little at the memory of that horrible day. “He said that I’d done the right thing. That sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to, that you don’t agree with, when you care for someone.”  
  
“When you love someone,” he clarified.  
  
Huh. Seemed that my dad understood, and Greg, and Ty – everyone except me. “But… can you really tell me that you want to be my slave?”  
  
His reaction to my question blew me away.  
  
He laughed.  
  
“You still don’t get it, do you?” He pulled me close, wrapped strong arms around me, kissed me. “No matter how many times I explain it to you.”  
  
He had tried, so many times over the last month, to tell me that the auction hadn’t really changed things, but I guess it hadn’t sunk in. I couldn’t see him as a slave, so I didn’t understand how he could live as one.  
  
I joked, “Maybe we need a translator.”  
  
He laughed again, but this time, it had a hard edge to it. “Translate this,” he whispered before capturing my lips once more, and again, over and over, bruising and hard, and then suddenly gentle and exploring.  
  
 _Everything he was to me, all I was to him..._   
  
I was speechless when our lips finally parted, but he wasn’t.  
  
“I have been yours for years, my love. If I physically belonged to someone else – if any of the O'Haras’ plans for me had been successful – I would still be yours. And if it means wearing this…”  
  
  
  
  
I couldn’t believe what I found myself thinking, what I heard myself saying.   
  
Until recently, the thing that had scared me most in life was that moment back at that detention center, when a young doctor who called herself Alice flipped a switch and took my body away. That day had been the beginning of a terrible dream, but this morning, the nightmare was dispelled. I had no choices then. Today, I made the only one that made sense.  
  
It wasn’t enslavement I feared now. Losing Marc terrified me, more than anything ever had or ever would in the future. I could face any fate, any condition, if I knew he’d be there in the end.  
  
I reached up and touched my collar. “Some people will look at this and think the worst. Of me, for my position, but also of you, for making the choice you did. But I don’t care what they think.” I got up and walked over to the picture window, where a month ago I’d stood, my wrists manacled.  
  
He hadn’t understood why I’d wanted him to chain me then, and in some ways, neither did I. But now, it was perfectly clear. I could wear those chains, but they didn’t define me. And now, neither did my collar. It was merely a symbol, an emblem – not of the day it was locked on, but of this day. The day I chose to be his.  
  
He stepped to my side, wrapped both arms around me and stared out at the clear winter scene. “I’ll always care how others see you. But if you have come to accept that,” he said, nodding hesitantly toward my throat, “then I guess I can too.” He turned me gently to face him and I caught a steely glint in his eye. “First chance I get to get it off you, though, it goes off. I don’t need it to prove that you’re mine.”  
  
His arms pulled me closer then, enveloping me in a possessive embrace. And when he kissed me to seal our deal, my mind responded in words requiring no speech.  
  
 _As you wish… Master._


End file.
